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DILUVIUM; 



-OR- 



THE END OF THE WORLD, 



1892. 

A.- D. 

1889. 



GEORGE S. PIDGEON 



•He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly 
and shame unto him." — Prov. Ch. 18, 






ST. LOUIS: 
COMMERCIAL PRINTING CO., 

1885. 



IBS 6 -re 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1884, by 

GEOKGE S. PIDGEON, 
In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



COMMENDATIONS. 



[From M. J. Howley, Auditor, City of Cairo, Ills .] 
Hon. Geo. S. Pidgeon. 

Dear Sir:— From what I have read of your book "Diluvium," I can 
say it is highly interesting and instructive. It is well written and full of 
useful information. It cannot fail to interest every lover of books. It 
ought to become one of the most popular books of the day. I shall be 
glad to secure a copy when published. Very Truly, 

M. J. Howley. 

Cairo, Ills., Nov. 22d, 1884. 
Something new. We have seen part of the manuscript copy of a book 
entitled "Diluvium." If one may infer the character of a book from 
reading a part, we can safely say it will be highly interesting and instruc - 
tive. It is really something new, and will interest everyone. Entirely 
out of the beaten track, it presents a number of facts and views of a sci- 
entific cast, that are intensely interesting. We understand it is to be 
published in a few weeks. — Cairo Bulletin. 

[From H. H. Candee, U.S. Commissioner.] 
Judge G. S. Pidgeon. Cairo, Ills., Nov. 18th, 1834. 

Dear Sir:— I have looked over the list of contents of, and read ex- 
tracts from, your forthcoming book entitled "Diluvium ; or End of the 
World." It certainly is a remarkable production, and contains some 
theories calculated to startle the people of to-day. It will interest all, 
and should be generally read. You will enroll my name among your list 
of subscribers. Yours Truly, 

H. H. C ANDES. 

[From Russell B. Griffin, Esq., of Sedalia, Mo.] 
Geo. S. Pidgeon, Esq. Sedalia, Mo., Nov. 15th, 1881. 

Dear Sir :— After reading your work entitled "Diluvium," I can freely 
say that it is a remarkable and striking presentation of facts and theories 
in regard to questions of universal interest whieh I have ever met with 
before. The reasoning is sound, and the facts undisputed, as it appears 
tome. Your book will prove exceedingly popular and interesting. I 
shall again read itcaref ally through, when published, with the greatest 
pleasure. Yours Respectfully, 

Russell B. Griffin. 



Cairo, Ills., Nov. 21st, 1884. 
A new book— "Diluvium." We have seen a part of the manuscript of 
^'Diluvium." It will prove intensely iuteresting to everybody, as it cer- 
tainly concerns every one. When published we shall be certain to give 
It a reading, and advisa everybody to go and do likewise.— Argus Journal, 
Nov. 21st, 1881. 

[From D. T. Linegar, Member Ills. Gen'l Assembly.] 
Geo. S. Pidgeon. Cairo, Ills . , Nov. 10th, 1884. 

Dear Sir: — I have read the opening chapters of your book entitled 
"Diluvium ; or End of the World ;" your work is an interesting and timely 
discussion of a number of very interesting subjects, in which every one 
must have an interest, and can not well afford to neglect the opportunity 
of acquiring the information which your book will supply. The subjects 
presented are not only of general concern or interest, but are clearly and 
concisely stated in language well suited to popular reading, and will not 
fail to secure a large sale of the book. Yours, etc., 

D. T. Linegar. 

[From Judge R. S. Yocum, of Alexander Co., Ills.] 
Hon. Geo. S. Pidgeon. Alexander Co., Ills., Nov. 22d, 1884. 

Dear Sir:— I became deeply interested in reading your book 
"Diluvium; or End of the World. " Although not an agreeable subject 
to contemplate, I found it fascinating and calculated to arouse the mind 
to its greatest activity. The fertility and plausibility of reasoning that 
produced the work is to be wondered at. Although based upon facts 
and generally accepted scientific theories, it is anything but dry reading, 
and can not fail to entertain all who read it, though they may not, in view 
of the date fixed, heartily accept the conclusions of the author. 

Yours Very Truly, 

R. S. Yocum. 

[From John M. Lansden, Att'y at Law, Cairo, Ills.] 
Hon. G. S. Pidgeon. Cairo, Ills., Nov. 22d, 1884. 

Dear Sir:— I have read a few chapters in manuscript of your forth- 
coming book entitled "Diluvium," and will say they have made it very 
evident that the quotation on the title page may be justly applied to him 
who, merely from observing the title, or noticing the subjects discussed, 
says that it is visionary or wholly speculative, or of no practical importance 
The subject matter of the book may indeed invoke on the part of many, 
some such criticism, some such captious disposition of the book, and 
hence the propriety of confronting all such persons with the truth— that 
wise truth— that "he that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly 
and shame unto him." I shall be glad to procure a copy of the work 
when it is published. Yours Truly, 

John M. Lansden. 



CONTENTS. 



Preface, - - - . - 9 

Chapter L, - - - 17 

Introductory — Schemes for Inundating Sahara, the Great 
African Desert— M. De Lesseps— Time of Beginning and Com- 
pletion — Doubters. 

Chapter II., - - . 29 

Extent of Sahara — Area below Sea-level — Tons Required to 
Fill the Desert— Weight of the Earth— Probable Change in 
the Earth's Planetary Position. 



Chapter III., - 34 

<3ost of the Canal — The Panama Interoceanic Canal-— Last 
Report of Progress — M. Fuchs— A Rising Sea Level — 
Principles of Gravitation — Position of the Earth in Space — 
Natural Phenomena Always Complex — Attraction of Matter. 



6 



Chapter IV., 



DILUVIUM. 



45 



Diagram of the Earth— Lines of Gravity— Change of the Eclip- 
tic — Emergence and Submergence of the Land Surface — 
Solar Influence — Results. 



Chapter V., 



55 



Equatorial Plane — Centre of Gravity in the Northern and 
Southern Hemispheres — Centre of Gravity Between the Two 
—The Position of this Centre — Probabilities. 



Chapter VI., 



62 



Physical Changes — The Desert of Sahara Formerly a Sea— The 
Lost Atlantis — Great Continent of the South Pacific Ocean — 
Islands of Polynesia. 



Chapter VII., 



67 



Physics — The Earth's Equipoise — Aerolites — Objects in View — 
Commercial Benefits — San Francisco Chronicle — Area — Falla- 
cies—Mississippi River — Dynamics. 



Chapter VIII., 



84 



La Place — Nebular Theory of Cosmic Origin— Thermic Change s 
— Great Year— Noah's Flood. 



Chapter IX., 



90 



The Last Flood— Chinese Antiquity— Asia— The Earth's Axis — 
Former Position— Mammalia— Glaciers — Coal Measures. 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter X., - - - 98 

Climatal Changes — Glacial Systems— Age of Ice — Earth's Cen- 
tre of Gravity Changed by — Inversion of the Poles. 



Chapter XL, — - - - 111 

Former Epochs and Floods — Natural Agents — Erratic Rocks — 
Sudden Changes — Norwegian Theory. 

Chapter XIL, - - - - 125 

Petrified Forests — Corroborative Evidence— Fossil Remains — 
Theories in Respect of — Pliocene Age — Animal Habits— 
Ossiferous Caves — Fish Fossils — Aurignac — Kansas — Sub- 
mersion . 

Chapter XIII., 152 

Coal Measures. 

Chapter XIV. 5 156 

Primordial Age— Age of the World — Deluged at Different Times. 

Chapter XV., 160 

Beginning and End of Epochs— Improved Race of Animals — 
End of Man— New.Race— New Earth— End of the Quater- 
nary Age of the World. 



8 



DILUVIUM. 



Chaptee XVI., 

Conclusion * 



169 



Addenda, 



174 





:•*#- 




PREFACE. 



^0 avoid misconception of the author, or his 
purpose, in presenting the following specu- 
lations to the public, he wishes to say that, 
though he has given somewhat of his time to a 
study of those natural sciences chiefly involved 
in a discussion of the theories herein presented, 
and of the conclusions drawn therefrom, he still 
recognizes his liability to err; but his convictions 
being that they were entirely consistent with 
those principles or natural laws which are ever 
without conflict or shadow of change or turning 
— as consistent, active and certain now as when 
first called into existence by the volition of an 
Omnipotent Creator — and that his conclusions 
were the necessary sequence of the premises — it 
seemed rather a duty than otherwise to present 
them for the consideration of others. 



10 DILUVIUM. 

The author, as lie conceives, bases his theories 
upon recognized principles and authenticated 
facts ; his conclusions appear, at least to himself, 
as the necessary result of converting Sahara, the 
great African desert, into an inland sea, as now 
proposed, and as he believes will be done in the 
coining decade. Other than by this publication 
in book form, he knew of no effective method by 
which he could so well present his views to such 
as might be willing to consider them. 

It is confessed that the title selected for this 
book is of a somewhat startling character, and 
may be calculated to awaken an interest in the 
work ; but the reader is assured, the title has not 
been adopted, like the head-lines of a sensational 
story, as a mere decoy to entrap the unwary, but 
as a fair indication of what may be expected 
within. As to the sufficiency of the facts and 
proofs, and the reasonableness of the conclusions 
drawn therefrom, every one will form his or her 
own opinion. 

He has given the subject such consideration as 
the facilities at command would enable him to do 
with reference to those cosmic and geographical 
changes in the earth which may be expected to 



PKEFACE. 11 

follow from so great a change of mass or matter 
from one section of the globe to another, being 
fully impressed with the truths of the several 
views and theories herein set forth. Our first in- 
tention was to communicate them to others 
through the medium of the weekly or monthly 
press ; but finding any statements, however con- 
densed, to greatly exceed our first expectations, 
we have written them out for publication in their 
present form. 

In the observations and researches of writers 
upon physical science, we found so many facts 
which corroborate and strengthen our own con- 
clusions as to the effect likely to follow the innun- 
dation of the great desert, our chief aim has been 
to select and present to the reader no more than 
enough to be fairly understood by all persons 
whose general knowledge fits them for a consid- 
eration of the views and reasoning presented. 

Begging your pardon for one further digression 
from our subject, we wish to say it has not been 
without hesitation we present this work to the 
reader, because we foresaw some would say these 
theories as to the consequences likely to result 
from converting Sahara into an inland sea can not 



12 DILUVIUM. 

be true, else why have not some of the very many 
eminent savans and writers of the day pointed 
out the great danger to be apprehended. 

Again, others will feel as in the case of a per- 
son treading a doubtful path along the brink of 
a deep and dark abyss, who prefers not to look 
down or consider the probabilities and possible 
consequences of falling, or even have any one to 
point them out. 

On the other hand, entertaining our present 
opinions, we felt to withhold them would make of 
us a sort of particeps criminis — or an accessory 
before the fact, to any event which, by timely 
notice, might have been prevented or avoided. 
And we felt, farther, that this being a scientific 
question in no event could harm result by direct- 
ing attention to it in season. 

"Herr Vogel considers that the fear that an 
hypothesis or theory might do harm to science, 
is only justifiable in very rare cases; in most 
cases it will further science. In the first place, 
it draws attention of the reader to things which, 
but for the hypothesis, might have been neg- 
lected. Of course, if the reader is so strongly 
influenced that, in favor of the hypothesis, he 



PREFACE, 13 

sees things which, do not exist — and this may 
happen sometimes — science may for awhile be 
arrested in its progress ; but in that case, the 
reader is far more to blame than the author of 
the hypothesis. A. Proctor." 

Whether, therefore, oar theories provoke levity 
or serious and thoughtful consideration we give 
them, and leave others to say whether mis- 
taken and fallacious, or true — or it may be only 
food for amusement — a literary condiment where- 
with to season more substantial dishes. 

If the illustrations in our work, or an occasional 
remark, would seem to indicate a want of appre- 
ciation of the importance of the subject, the 
author begs the reader not to attribute it to a lack 
of proper seriousness on his part, so much as to 
a disposition not to discount trouble before ma- 
turity by an undue and fruitless anxiety about 
future events wholly beyond his individual con- 
trol, which would be in spirit, if not in the letter, 
contrary to the injunction that warns us against 
crying for spilled milk ; or, to reverse the proverb, 
we say, don't worry about milk that must be 
spilled. 

One feels a secret admiration of the philo- 



14 DILUVIUM. 

sophic colored citizen who, a short time before 
his execution, was asked if he had any further 
request to make. Said he: "None, except a good 
water melon." 

So far as our theories are new, or in conflict 
with received opinion, it is with due defference to 
superior knowledge and diffidence in our own 
ability, which might not have been overcome had 
we not felt encouraged by the reflection that, 
though knowledge is power, and wealth is power, 
truth is more potent still; whether kings or peas- 
ants, men of high renown or low degree, be the 
vehicle of communication, it is equally a part of 
divinity itself, and its reign on earth will have 
but begun when man and all his works have 
passed away. 

We know not what reception our efforts shall 
meet with — whether they may stimulate further 
investigation or not. The announcement of a 
somewhat similar event on a former occasion did 
not. At that time, the general average of wicked- 
ness may have been higher, and the exceptions 
fewer, than now ; but the present age can cer- 
tainly show a large, very large, number of indi- 
vidual specimens that would have been good for 



PREFACE. 15 

an anti-diluvian blue ribbon. Nor, we fear, are 
the exceptions as numerous as they ought to be. 

We make no claim to an exhaustive discussion 
or treatise, or that our views have been presented 
as fully and forcibly as they might be. We have 
done, within the limits proposed, as well as we 
could. Others, if they choose, may do as much 
better as they can. If u the only impeccable 
authors are those who never wrote," we may not 
wholly escape, and do not object to any just and 
well-meant criticism. 

Launching our little craft upon the sea of pub- 
lic favor, if the venture proves successful we may 
dispatch, at some future time, a second cargo of 
an improved quality. 

Soliciting your kind indulgence, gentle reader, 
we are most sincerely yours, etc., 

THE AUTHOR. 



CHAPTER I. 




Introductory — Schemes for Inundating Sahara, the Great 
African Desert — M. De Lesseps — Time of Beginning and Com- 
pletion — Doubters . 

"To him who in the love of Nature holds 
Communion with her visible forms — she speaks 
A various language.' ' — Bryant. 

|ERHAPS, of the many interesting themes 
for our contemplation and improvement 
within the domain of natural science, 
none afford to a greater extent the opportunity 
of combining both pleasure and profit, inter- 
est and instruction, than those laws or forces 
which immediately concern the physical consti- 
tution and permanency of the globe we inhabit — 
the abiding place and heritage of man, during 
his natural life, as well as the habitation and 
home of the inferior races of animals over whom 
he has been given dominion and power. 



18 DILUVIUM. 

The Creator has given to man a mind so organ- 
ized that he may not only contemplate terrestrial 
phenomena with pleasure, but every manifesta- 
tion of creative energy within the range of 
thought or vision. The starry heavens above; 
the earth beneath, and the varied and ever 
changing scenery upon its surface, — the last pos- 
sessing the additional interest of being immedi- 
ately connected with his own safety and exist- 
ence. He has reasoning faculties by which he 
may ascertain and discover the laws or natural 
forces inherent or impressed upon matter from 
the beginning. The prolific source of incessant 
mutations of form and physical phenomena — he 
may control and use them to his advantage, or 
may, whether willfully or ignorantly, become the 
victim of self destruction. 

The principle of gravitation is the foundation 
and corner stone upon which the earth reposes. 
It is this force in nature that enables man to 
stand, walk or run at will ; to build houses ; erect 
stately structures ; and generally no act or opera- 
tion necessary for his protection, comfort or 
happiness could be executed or done but for the 
constant force of this law in nature. 



DILUVIUM. 19 

He may make it his most valuable and trusty 
servant, to do his bidding, or his most destruc- 
tive and powerful enemy — as he shall wisely or 
unwisely invoke its power. 

One person could easily at high tide make an 
opening for the admission of water through the 
dykes of Holland that all the men in Europe 
could not stop or fill until it had covered the 
country that is now protected by these levees. 

The discovery of Sir Isaac Newton of the prin- 
ciple of gravity was the beginning of a new era 
in physical science ; and as an effort of genius 
was equal, if not superior, to the tragedies of 
Shakespeare, Homer's Iliad or the frescoes of 
Michael Angelo. 

A force constant and uniform in action, certain 
in results and universal in extent. It is the key 
to unlock the hidden geological mysteries of the 
earth, and the prophet to foretell coming events 
yet hidden from sight in the womb of time. 

This law of gravity may be said to have been 
the proximate cause of cosmic couvulsions at 
long intervals or geological ages apart, which 
have deluged the earth, and will again bring upon 
it a cataclysm that shall leave no historian to 
record the catastrophe. 



20 DILUVIUM. 

Not only so, but it may be within the power 
of man to precipitate, prematurely, such an event 
(if anything ever so happens) and there is the 
highest degree of probability in the statement 
that such will be the case or fact within a few 
years from this time — a deduction believed to be 
fairly drawn and fully warranted from the facts 
and proofs given in the following pages. 

A perusal of the contents of this volume will 
satisfy the doubter and convince the skeptic, who 
may question the possibility of such an event, 
not only of its possibility, but of a high degree of 
probability that such an occurrence within the 
time fixed will take place. Our expectations are 
not based upon any doubtful interpretation of 
prophecy, a revelation from heaven, or other 
supernatural sources of knowledge. 

Neither do we invoke the assistance of any un- 
known or insufficiently established principle in na- 
ture ; or that of any doubtful phenomena or ques- 
tionable fact ; but only such as are accepted by 
all well-informed persons. And reasoning from 
the effects — from the phenomena, upwards to the 
cause, the writer asserts the occurrence of such 
events in past geological periods as a fair and 



DILUVIUM. 21 

reasonable deduction from telluric phenomena, as 
shown by the concurrent testimony of many emi- 
nent scientists and students of the present age ; 
and he predicts a cataclysm, or end of the world, 
so far as animal life is concerned, as the necessary 
result of principles recognized by all as true and 
unquestionable. 

Like causes always have and must always con- 
tinue to produce the same or like results ; na- 
ture's forces never tire or forget; energies are 
never lost but ever changing ; mutability is writ- 
ten over the face of all things. In the future, as 
in the past, great events will serve as the land- 
marks of time — events exceeding in magnitude 
and consequence those preceding or following, as 
some lofty mountain-peak that rises far above 
the foot hills by which it is approached. As we 
recede from one such event we are nearing anoth- 
er ; natural forces are constantly making altera- 
tions in the topography and structure of the 
earth; human agency, too, has and will still contri- 
bute in the production of structural changes. Man 
may set in motion natural forces wholly beyond 
subsequent control ; he may release potential en- 
ergies beneath whose mighty tread he would van- 



22 DILUVIUM. 

ish as the dewdrop under a tropical sun ; he may 
open Pandora's box only to find himself power- 
less to re -imprison the evil genius which his tem- 
erity hath set at liberty. Nature 's laws are no 
respecters of persons or numbers — observe no 
equities — whether the welfare of one or one mil- 
lion be involved, avails nothing. The scheme for 
inundating the desert of Sahara finds endorse- 
ment from English and French engineers ; it is a 
promising and plausible project, and has already 
taken possession of the public mind as the next 
great international work, which, in the interests 
of European commerce, will engage the attention 
of capital. It may not, therefore, be thought un- 
reasonable to assume that within a few years 
this work will have been begun, and be pushed 
to an early completion. Upon this assumption 
we place the prediction of a paroxysmal and 
sudden abnormal movement of the globe, to be 
followed by a deluge or flood. 

Projects for inundating large areas of the 
earth's surface, lying below sea level, have been 
at different times and are now proposed for the 
ostensible purpose of securing commercial and 
other advantages, which may be expected to fol- 



DILUVIUM. 23 

low. The principal or chief project of this kind 
is the one for inundating the great African desert, 
Sahara, thereby converting that vast area into an 
inland sea by cutting a canal from the Gulf of 
Cabes, on the Mediterranean, into the Algerian 
arm of this desert. 

" The project of submersion of large parts of 
the Sahara originated during the French geodetic 
survey, conducted by Capt. Roudaire. Capt. 
Roudaire was commissioned in 1874 to complete 
the topographical survey of the depression exist- 
ing in the Sahara at Constantine, and he found 
upon the French territory an inundable space 
of 6,000 kilometers, which forms a part of the 
ancient Tritonitas Paulus, anciently communi- 
cating with the Mediterranean near Cabes. 

Heintry Durveyrier." 

It is also proposed to admit the waters of the 
Atlantic Ocean by cutting through a narrow 
range of sand hills to inundate the western 
portion of Sahara, from the coast facing the 
Canary Islands, as far as the country of Asawad 
and Timbuctoo, covering an area of 126,000 
square miles. In the light of modern progress 
and the marvelous accomplishments of the last 



24 DILUVIUM, 

fifty years or half century, these projects will 
certainly be prosecuted and become accomplished 
events within a few years at most. The distin- 
guished French engineer, M. De Lesseps, who 
is now engaged in the prosecution of even a more 
difficult and expensive work, so far as first cost is 
concerned — the Panama Canal across the Isth- 
mus of Darien, which, it is said, will be opened for 
traffic by the year A. D. 1888 — endorses these 
schemes for flooding the Sahara, and very likely 
will undertake them as soon as the work he is 
now engaged upon is completed or sufficiently 
advanced, unless his age shall prevent. If such 
should be the fact, then there are many other 
distinguished engineers, both in Europe and 
America, who would only be too glad to secure 
so great a distinction. Therefore we may reason- 
ably expect that this work will begin as early as 
the fall of the year 1889, and will be finished or 
completed by the year A. D. 1892. 

In the future, as it has been in times past, all 
great achievements will have their vicissitudes: 
the opposition of some ; the adverse criticism of 
others ; and their periods of progress and delay ; 
but modern skill and capital have accomplished 



DILUVIUM. 25 

works that were, but a few years since, regarded 
as visionary and Utopian, until the possible 
achievements of engineering skill and combined 
capital can scarcely be foretold or limited. It is 
also true that unforeseen complications or causes 
may delay the beginning of this work for a sea- 
son ; but the restless and ambitious spirit of the 
age will not allow it to long remain forgotten. 

Still other causes than those already enumera- 
ted will hasten the early consummation of this 
scheme: the English occupation of Egypt and 
the Soudan country ; the interests of European 
nations now seeking to secure a share in African 
Colonization ; and the trade with the country ly- 
ing south of the desert. 

By invitation of the German Empire, France, 
Portugal and other European powers, a confer- 
ence of the nations and governments interested 
in the African commerce of the Congo River Val- 
ley has, recently (November, 1884) met in the 
city of Berlin to consider the settlement or terri- 
torial delimitation and other questions, in 
which the German Empire, England, France, 
Belgium, Portugal and other powers, in- 
cluding the United States, are deeply inter- 



26 DILUVIUM. 

ested. To this Congo or West African Con- 
ference the United States have sent accredited 
representation. New and unexpected questions 
and differences may arise, which, before final de- 
termination, may be referred to future conferences 
or settled by diplomatic correspondence between 
the several governments having an interest in 
African colonization and commerce. When these 
questions and such complications or conflicting 
rights as may appear have been satisfactorily ad- 
justed, then will there be an increased interest in 
and demand for a safer and speedier transit across 
the arid, trackless waste of Sahara — this desert 
lying, as it does, directly between the Mediterran- 
ean Sea and the Congo Valley — as well as other 
sections of Africa from which will come a large 
and growing commerce or trade in coffee, oils, 
ivory, gold dust and other valuable productions 
of equatorial Africa. The inundation of the 
desert of Sahara and the creation of an inland sea 
will be the least expensive and most practical, 
from a trade view of the situation. Our knowl- 
edge of the psychological relations existing be- 
tween mind and the material world is not yet 
such as to admit of the same certainty in forecast- 



DILUVIUM. 27 

ing future results in human affairs as in physical 
science; but we believe that historical analysis 
warrants the conclusion that, in every age man- 
kind, without conscious intent, have moved to- 
ward the ultimate accomplishment of certain ends 
or results — towards a destiny enveloped and hid- 
den from sight by the sombre drapery that di- 
vides the two great oceans of time, the past and 
the future, from *each other. In the grand march 
towards this ultimate end, we may consider man- 
kind as a unit, or single body, which, like a 
countless army, is moving forward in certain lines 
of thought and development. Towards these pur- 
poses and this destiny this body moves onward 
like the waters of the ocean, or some irresistible 
power that covers and overturns all barriers to 
its progress ; in vain does the lookout shout 
"Danger ahoy ! " the individual members of this 
body, the molecules of this unit, neither hear nor 
heed the cry. As an innumerable herd of stam- 
peding animals, those in front cannot stop, nor 
those behind see the danger until too late. 

Any attempt at a diversion of the column or 
change of direction is but opposing the inevitable 
and unalterable; this ultimate end or objective 



28 DILUVIUM. 

is the consummation of purposes or desires 
growing out of the dominant thought character- 
istic of the particular age. 

The inspiration of to-day is the prosecution 
and development of great schemes, such as tun- 
neling mountains, opening oceanic canals, crea- 
ting inland seas, and a materialism that sees not 
a potency or promise to any form or vestige of 
life, except in the conservation of force, and the 
incessant transmutations of matter. 

We may, therefore, reasonably expect that by 
the year A. D. 1892 the waters of the Atlantic and 
Mediterranean, or of one of them, will fill this great 
African basin, the natural and probable result of 
which will be the fulfillment of the predictions 
herein — being no more than descriptive of those 
consequences or effects likely to follow the sup- 
posed antecedent conditions upon which they are 
predicated, in obedience to natural laws or forces, 
exact and certain, whether called into play by 
the movements of a world or an atom, the up- 
heaval of a mountain or the fall of a leaf. 

Upon the principles and canons of Newton, 
Kepler, La Place, and other scientists, we think 
the reasoning correct and the conclusions the 
necessary result. 



NORTHERN AFRICA 



SAHARA. 




CHAPTER II. 




Extent of Sahara — Area below !Sea-level— Tons Eequired to 
Fill the Desert — Weight of the Earth — Probable Change in 
the Earth's Planetary Position. 

^HE Desert of Sahara extends from the Red 
Sea on the east to the Atlantic Ocean on 
the west, and from the mountains of Ber* 
beria and Atlas on the north to the fertile and 
tropical regions of Negroland on the south side 
of the Tropic of Cancer. It covers 15° in lati- 
tude and 49° in longitude, and contains a total 
of over 8,500,000 square kilometers — an area 
larger than that covered by the United States of 
North America. The whole of this great desert is 
not below sea-level. A fraction of the included 
area consists of table-lands, low ranges of hills 
and mountains, such as the Wanyanga and 
Ahagger, and the mountains and table-land of 
Mourzouk, not generally of considerable eleva- 



30 DILUVIUM. 

tion. The amount of area above and below sea- 
level cannot be given with exact precision, be- 
cause of conflicting statements made by Euro- 
pean engineers and travelers who have visited 
different sections of this desert, mostly lying on 
the north and west sides. But all agree that 
there is a large country embraced within its ex- 
terior boundaries lying below sea-level, believed 
to be much the largest part in extent. 

A very considerable part of this desert is, to 
this day, more of a terra incognita than equa- 
torial Africa. Even the wandering Arabs and 
the trading caravans that cross it keep to certain 
lines of travel and dare not venture beyond 
these lines of travel, keeping to the higher and 
more hospitable parts, where water and some 
scanty vegetation may be found, avoiding the 
lower levels and sandy waste that spreads out 
like an interminable sea in all directions. We 
may assume that most of the unexplored portions 
are the deeper parts of an ancient ocean-bed that 
once covered the whole land ; and that the depth 
and area of the surface within this desert below 
sea-level is greater than any estimate that has 
hitherto been made. It was once a sea and 



DILUVIUM. 31 

under water, as shown by water-lines, as well 
as the marine shells and fauna now found 
there. The measurements that have been made 
were not very remote from its border-lines. It is 
reasonable to expect the greatest depression with- 
in the interior and central parts. 

Let us suppose that only one -fifteenth of the 
whole of this vast country, three thousand miles 
long and one thousand miles wide, extending 
from the Indian Ocean on the east to the Atlantic 
on the west, to be an average of 275 meters below 
sea-level ; we then have an area of 560,000 square 
kilometers, or about 220,000 square miles, and to 
fill this basin would require 176,637,542,400,000 
tons of water, or over 176 trillions tons weight. 
The inundable area may be more than twice as 
large as the above estimate. If such be the fact, 
a proportionally less depth below sea level would 
still require an equal quantity and weight of wa- 
ter to fill it to the present level. 

As the estimated weight of the whole globe 
which we inhabit is 5,852 trillions of tons,* it will 
be seen that this body of water, to be taken 

*Thos. Dick, LL.D. 



32 DILUVIUM. 

equally from all other water surfaces of the 
earth and transferred by the force of gravitation 
to fill this great desert and convert it into an in- 
land sea, constitutes a very large fraction of the 
whole mass and bulk of the earth. This would 
still be true, though it was but half so much as 
the foregoing estimate, but when we further con- 
sider that the transfer of this weight from where 
it is now to this new place of deposit would, as 
one of the immediate results of such transporta- 
tion, raise the present sea level, until the mesa 
land and lower ranges would be below the new 
level, and therefore also covered with water. We 
can scarcely venture to fix a limit to the changes 
in Africa and Europe and the whole earth, and to 
its inhabitants, that might not follow. 

That these changes and altered conditions 
would not proceed with slow and measured steps, 
but with an impetuosity and suddenness com- 
mensurate with the immensity of the work and 
natural forces brought into play. The earth 
would seek a new line of gravitation to place 
itself in harmony with all the external forces act- 
ing upon it as a member and part of the universe 
of created matter. In the erratic oscillations and 



DILUVIUM. 33 

throes caused by contending forces her elements 
and the climatic conditions of different parts 
would be re-adjusted in their several relations to 
each other. The whole earth would be as a reed 
shaken in the wind. 

Mankind has been endowed with reasoning 
faculties and the capacity to learn the operation 
and existence of those laws which govern the 
physical universe, and he has by the same power 
been given the freedom of choice whether he will 
so act as to promote and secure his own temporal 
welfare, or acting in disregard of such laws 
suffer the consequences. But whether the prose- 
cution of so hazardous a scheme shall proceed 
may also, in ways that we do not now under- 
stand, depend upon the purposes of Him who, 
without interfering with or infringing upon the 
freedom of will, still shapes the destinies of men 
and sometimes leaves them to a disbelief or in- 
difference that makes them the agents of their 
own destruction and punishment — the means to 
an end — the instruments in the divine economy for 
carrying out the purposes of Him whose perfec- 
tions are incomprehensible and whose ways are 
past finding out. 



jfe'O «- 5)£={§>=C(5 — . o^ 



CHAPTER III. 




Cost of the Canal — The Panama Interoceanic Canal — Last 
Report of Progress — M. Fuchs — A Rising Sea Level — 
Principles of Gravitation — Position of the Earth in Space — 
Natural Phenomena Always Complex — Attraction of Matter. 

r ERE there no evil or injurious conse- 
quences to "be apprehended in sub- 
merging the desert of Sahara, the com- 
mercial benefits which might be reasonably ex- 
pected to follow would be greater in proportion 
to first cost than in the great work of uniting 
the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by the Panama 
Canal. 

The latter has been estimated to require the 
expenditure of as much as two hundred millions 
of dollars. The work is now being carried for- 
ward with great energy, having from ten to twenty 
thousand laborers constantly employed. An ex- 
penditure of more than fifty millions has already 
been made to this time. 



DILUVIUM. 35 

The estimated cost of cutting a canal through 
from the Gulf of Cabes to the Algerian arm of 
Sahara is 300,000,000 francs, or say about 60,000,- 
000 of dollars. The waters of the Red Sea, the 
Mediteranean and the Atlantic might all be 
turned upon Saraha, by as many separate open- 
ings for less than the highest estimates for the 
completion of the Panama Canal, or any two of 
these for less than required to connect the Pacific 
and Gulf of Mexico by Capt. James B. Eads' ship 
railway. 

So far as the required capital and labor are 
concerned it is a practical undertaking, and in 
the recurring periods of peace and general pros- 
perity, when capital becomes redundant and con- 
fident, seeking investment in new and plausible 
schemes of commercial progress and development, 
there can be but slight doubt that this great 
project for making a vast inland sea of Sahara 
will be brought forward and pushed to comple- 
tion, if not by M. de Lesseps, then by some other 
equally distinguished and ambitious engineer, 
seeking professional honors and notoriety. 
With the completion of the Panama Canal, as 
now proposed, by the year A. D. 1888, this will 



36 DILUVIUM. 

be the next great international work to engage 
public attention. Capital, commercial supre- 
macy, ambition and recklessness will all combine 
to promote the work, and then the beginning of 
the end will not be far away. 

The last report of M. de Lesseps, made at a 
meeting of the shareholders in the Panama Inter- 
oceanic Canal, in Paris, July 23, 1884, showed a 
total expenditure up to June 30, 1883, of $42,205,- 
955. This report after stating the financial re- 
sources of the company to be in a satisfactory 
condition, and the amount of work yet to be done, 
concludes with the following statement : 

" This is calculated to execute the whole of the 
dry excavations in three years, and the necessary 
dredging in two years. It therefore results that 
even if we had only commenced the work of dry 
excavation on January 1st, 1885, and the dredg- 
ing on January 1st, 1886, the canal could be fin- 
ished by mathematical calculation by January 
1st, 1888." 

" To meet anything unforseen, notwithstanding 
that the minimum yields just estimated have 
allowed for unforseen accidents, we will have as 
a sort of margin all that will have been executed 



DILUVIUM. 37 

in dry excavations up to January 1st, 1885, and 
all tlie dredging that may be accomplished up to 
January 1st, 1886, and in addition all of the year 
1888. " 

It is also proposed to admit the waters of the 
Mediteranean from the Gulf of Sidra into the Lib- 
yan desert, which connects with and is but apart 
of the great African desert, Sahara. Whether 
this opening for the admission of the waters of 
the ocean into the desert be made from Sidra, 
Cabes, or the west coast opposite the Canary 
islands, the ultimate effect and consequence must 
and will be the same. No insuperable difficulties 
are known or supposed to exist in either case. 
The distance from the G-ulf of Cabes to the Alge- 
rian arm of Saraha, is twenty kilometers. The 
land between the gulf and desert is of recent ori- 
gin, consisting of alluvian sand and chalk forma- 
tions. The last as an underlying sub-stratum. 

" M. Fuchs found the breadth of the bank of 
chalk now shutting out the ancient bay Paulus 
Tritonitas to be twenty kilometers. " — Johnson's 
Cyclopcedia. 

The land lying between the desert and the 
Mediteranean Sea, and between the desert and the 



38 DILUVIUM. 

Atlantic Ocean, "being friable and free from meta- 
morphic, basaltic or other hard rock formations, 
there would be no obstacle or barrier to prevent 
the immediate and rapid erosions of the bottom 
and sides of the opening or canal through which 
the water may be first admitted. It would, as we 
have seen, have a fall which would send the water 
through with such velocity as to rapidly deepen 
and widen the water way, increasing hourly in 
volume, velocity and power in the ratio of a geo- 
metrical progression. 

To fill this desert to the present sea level would 
require an inconceivably great bulk and weight 
of water. 

But this level would not remain stationary ; it 
would rise as the waters rushed in, and the whole 
desert, including the Mesa and higher ranges of 
hills, as well as the lower parts, become as it 
was in ancient days, a great sea ; this vast bulk 
and weight of water being drawn from the entire 
water surface of the globe and deposited in anew 
and different locality, must, if Nature's laws are 
unvarying and certain in their operation, produce 
not only climatic, but changes in the earth's 
equipoise in space, as well as great alterations 
in the present relations of matter. 



DILUVIUM. 39 

The space previously occupied by the water 
which would enter and fill Sahara would be re- 
occupied by air, but as this element is 815 times 
lighter than water, it would furnish no consider- 
able equivalent for the displacement. 814 parts 
of the whole or total weight would be just so 
much taken from one part or section of the globe 
and deposited in a new and different place on the 
earth's surface. The effect would be, not only to 
raise the sea level by a change in the centre of 
gravitation, but other cosmic changes would be 
equally and absolutely certain to follow. 

The position of any object resting upon the 
surface of the earth is determined by the superior 
attraction of the earth. But the earth is a unit ; 
has her own position in space as a member or 
part of the stellar universe determined by the 
gravitating forces from without. The present 
planetary position of the earth is due to and may 
be taken as the exact equivalent of all the forces 
in Nature tending to produce that result. One 
factor is the mass and present position of matter 
in the globe itself. Nor can the amount of such 
change be fixed or pre-determined by a compari- 
son between the earth's total bulk and the amount 



40 DILUVIUM. 

of such, displacement. We have not the knowl- 
edge or means by which to calculate the precise 
present position of the earth's centre of celestial 
gravitations, and the direction and proportional 
relations between all external forces from with- 
out, as well as from within the solar system, the 
united efforts of all of them holding the earth on 
her present planetary position in her orbit. 

In nature all phenomena are complex, and de- 
pend upon many causes which may cross and re- 
cross each other in many ways. To illustrate 
the idea, we may consider some of the more ob- 
vious forces and complex motions of the moon in 
its movements. It revolves upon its axis once in 
about 27 days, and in the same time around the 
earth, and again with the earth around the sun, 
and yet, again, with the earth and sun and all the 
planets round the foci of some still greater ellipse. 
How complex, how various the forces operating 
to move the solar system, every star of the mil- 
lions that bedeck the dome of heaven contrib- 
uting its share in the grand result. It may never 
be possible to resolve all gravitational force pro- 
ceeding from millions of other worlds and our 
own, or determine the share and effect of each 



DILUVIUM. 41 

separately combined, with reference to the earth. 
Speaking as to the moon, Prof. Chas. A. Young 
says : " We are compelled to admit one of three 
things : either the lunar theory is in some de- 
gree mathematically incomplete, and fails to rep- 
resent accurately the gravitational action of the 
earth and sun, and other known heavenly bodies, 
upon her movements, or some unknown force oth- 
er than the gravitational attractions of these 
bodies is operating in the case, or else finally the 
earth's rotational motion is more or less irreg- 
ular, and so affects the time reckoning and con- 
founds prediction. If the last is really the case, 
it is in some sense a most discouraging fact, 
necessarily putting a limit to the accuracy of all 
prediction until some other unchanging measure 
of time shall be found." 

Therefore it may not be possible to foretell with 
accuracy and precision the direction or amount of 
terrestrial movement to be expected from the in- 
undation of Sahara ; but there is absolutely no 
uncertainty whatever in the uniform and ceaseless 
operation of those natural laws or forces which 
would be called into action by so doing. 

Take a toy balloon filled with just enough hy- 



42 DILUVIUM. 

drogen gas to support it ; place it in a room where 
the air is at rest ; now if the two centres coincide 
the balloon will remain at rest in whatever posi- 
tion it may be placed ; but if the centre of gravity 
is nearest to one side, then this side or hemis- 
phere will turn towards the earth. Now make 
the smallest addition to the upper or opposite 
side, so as to make that the heaviest, and it will 
at once take the place of the lowest hemisphere, 
each occupying the previous position of the 
other. As the child's toy, so the globe we inhab- 
it is but a great balloon speeding its way through 
space at the rate of 68,000 miles per hour, in obe- 
dience to natural force and subject to the same 
universal law of attraction, and quite as sensitive 
to any change or alteration in the position and 
relations of matter composing its bulk as the 
other. 

"In the case of bodies acted upon by more than 
a single force, the effect of each one is not there- 
by diminished. The resultant representing the 
total of the several forces, according to the sec- 
ond law of motion, a given force will produce the 
same effect whether the body on which it acts is 
in motion or at rest — whether it is acted upon by 



DILUVIUM. 43 

that force alone, or by others at the same time." 
— Elkoy M. Avery, Physics. 

" The problem of any number of bodies moving 
under their mutual attraction, according to the 
Newtonian laws, stands from a physical point of 
view on precisely the same footing as that of two 
bodies, given the masses and the positions and 
velocities corresponding to any moment of time. 
Then the whole configuration of the system for all 
time past and future (abst reacting outside influ- 
ences, of course) is absolutely determinate and 
amenable to calculation. But while in the case 
of two bodies the calculation is easy and feasi- 
ble by methods known for two hundred years, 
our analysis has not yet mastered the general 
problem for more than two." — Prof. Chas. A. 
Young, Scientific Monthly, Nov., 1884. 

All bodies throughout the universe attract and 
are attracted by each other in proportion to quan- 
tity, and inversely as the square of the distances. 
The position of the earth in its orbit is determined 
by gravitation, and since the sun, or even the 
whole of the solar system, is not more than a small 
fraction of the total mass of matter distributed 
throughout infinite space, the positions of the 



44 DILUVIUM. 

earth in her orbit must be taken as the resultant 
of all the forces acting upon it. 

It is not attracted or drawn equally in all di- 
rections, nor can we suppose the sun to exert the 
total of external force. He is but the satellite of 
some greater body, around which the planets and 
asteroids, as so many moons, attend this solar 
centre in his great orbit, and the solar system 
but a fraction of the whole of created matter. 
Now if by the transfer and change of matter from 
one place to another, that hemisphere which was 
lightest becomes the heavier, and the centre of 
gravity is moved from its present position, then 
there must of necessity be a readjustment of 
planetary position. The amount of matter thus 
changed is but one factor or element in determin- 
ing the amount of movement or the direction it 
would take from such displacement. 







CHAPTER IV. 



Diagram of the Earth — Lines of Gravity — Change of the Eclip- 
tic — Emergence and Submergence of the Land Surface — 
Solar Influence — Results. 

IT cannot be supposed that we might take a 
segment of the globe, comprising about 
one -thirty -fifth of its total bulk and weight, 



NOTE. 



On page 45, third line, instead of one-thirty -fifth 
read one hundred and seventy-six trillions of tons 
weight (176,000,000,000,000). 







"-^=9-^ 




CHAPTER IV. 



Diagram of the Earth — Lines of Gravity — Change of the Eclip- 
tic—Emergence and Submergence of the Land Surface — 
Solar Influence — Kesults. 

IT cannot be supposed that we might take a 
segment of the globe, comprising about 
one -thirty -fifth of its total bulk and weight, 
from one side, and transfer it to the opposite side, 
without disturbing the condition and present 
position of the earth in its orbit, and the rela- 
tions of its constituent elements. If not, it is im- 
material whether this change was instant or 
gradual ; the effect must be the same and would 
follow in the same order of time ; but if the 
earth's position, as a planet, would be affected at 
all by such a change of mass, then it would be 
with the rapidity with which matter will seek its 
level, or equilibrium, and a resulting new posi- 



46 DILUVIUM. 

tion when out of equipoise with external forces. 
As the force of gravity is a constant force, the 
earth would find its new position in the plane of 
the ecliptic, with the velocity of a falling body. 

Prof. Chas. A. Young, of pending astronomi- 
cal problems, says : 

" Another problem of terrestrial astronomy re- 
lates to the constancy of the position of the 
earth's axis in the globe. Just as a displace- 
ment of matter upon the surface or in the inte- 
rior of the earth would produce changes in the 
time of rotation, so also would they cause corres- 
ponding alterations in the position of the axis 
and in the places of the poles. The only ques- 
tion is whether they are so minute as to defy de- 
tection. It is easy to see that any such dis- 
placements of the earth's axis will be indicated 
by changes in the latitudes of observatories. If, 
for instance, the pole were moved a hundred feet 
from its present position toward the continent of 
Europe, the latitude of European observatories 
would be increased about one second. 

"The only observational evidence of such move- 
ment of the pole thus far is found in the results 
obtained by Nyren, in reducing the determina- 




Fig. 1. 



DILUVIUM. 49 

tions of the latitude of Pulkowa, made with the 
great vertical circle during the last twenty-five 
years. They seem to show a steady diminution 
of the latitude of this observatory — as if the 
pole were drifting away and increasing its dis- 
tance from Pulkowa at the rate of about a foot a 
year." 

Let the globe, fig. 1, represent the earth ; Nh 
the northern hemisphere ; Sh the southern hemis- 
phere ; the intersection of the lines C D and B A 
the centre of the earth ; N the centre of gravity ; 
C D the equator ; the tropics ; M the po- 
sition of the desert. Now, if we draw from 
the water surface of both hemispheres, say 
175 trillions of tons of water, or sufficient 
to fill the desert depressions to the present 
sea level, the centre of gravity will be 
moved in the direction of V, or towards this 
desert. But as the sea level would rise in the 
same ratio as the centre moves, the bulk and 
weight of displacement would be proportionally 
greater than the estimate. The gravitating line 
would undergo no change ; that is, its direction, 
considered apart from the matter or materials of 
which the earth is composed, and therefore the 



50 DILUVIUM. 

earth must move round, or otherwise alter its po- 
sition, until its new centre of gravity is brought 
into harmony with all of the external forces act- 
ing upon it. If this movement should be south 
or southeast, or southwest 25°, then the inclina- 
tion of the axis would be 48°, and the equatorial 
line would move to GX. The surface now under 
the poles would be at iT and W. The extremes 
of heat and cold in the Arctic and Antarctic 
would be greater ; the range would be greater ; 
the width of the torrid belt doubled. Such a 
change of inclination would not only be fol- 
lowed by the emergence of land now covered, 
and the submergence of other parts by water, 
but there would be a new ecliptic and new 
track through space in which the earth would 
move round the sun. How many and how 
great the various changes which would result 
from such an alteration of the earth's inclination 
in the plane of the ecliptic may be somewhat 
speculative. It may not be doubted they would 
be many, and challenge the most exuberant 
in imagination to describe or forecast. The sup- 
posed movement of 25 degrees is only given to il- 
lustrate a possible movement of the earth. The 



DILUVIUM. 51 

change might "be more or less, or amount to a 
complete inversion of the poles. 

The sun wields a controlling power over the 
planets within the solar system — greater than 
that of any other single body. It is the principal 
source of light and heat, the primary cause of 
rotary motion, as well as a large part of the phe- 
nomena observed upon the earth's surface ; but it 
is not the only or exclusive source of gravitating 
force. If it were so, the earth's axis would be 
and always remain vertical to the plane of the 
ecliptic. 

The sun and all other bodies, both within and 
without the solar constellation, act upon, and de- 
termine by their joint attraction the inclination 
of the earth's axis. It is but the resultant of all 
external force as applied to the earth and the 
molcules composing its bulk in their present re- 
lations to each other. If their present relation 
and position be altered, there must follow a cor- 
responding change in the angle of inclination of 
the axis and all lines of latitude and longitude. 

All the climatic and physical changes which 
would follow may not easily be foretold, more 
than they would be many and very great. 



52 



DILUVIUM. 



Those places now under or near the equator 
would be nearer the poles, whilst those parts 
near the poles would become the temperate or 
equatorial regions ; and Greenland might again, 
as it has unquestionably been once before, be- 
come a land of tropical animals and vegetation. 





Fig. 2. 

















CHAPTER Y. 




Equatorial Plane — Centre of Gravity in the Northern and 
Southern Hemispheres — Centre of Gravity Between the Two 
— The Position of this Centre — Probabilities. 

J3E plane of the equator divides the earth 
into two hemispheres equal in dimensions 
or size but not in weight. If we find the 
centre of gravity for each of these hemispheres 
separately, and connect them by a straight line, 
the centre of gravity common to both will be at 
some point on this line, nearer to the gravitating 
centre in the hemisphere of greatest weight. 

Let Fig. 2 represent the earth divided into two 
equal hemispheres by the line A B. Let D 
represent the centre of gravity in the hemisphere 
JVh, and E the centre of gravity in Sh, and O the 
centre of gravity common to both ; the distance 
E O will be to the distance C D as the weight 



56 DILUVIUM. 

of the hemisphere Sh is to the weight of the hem- 
isphere JSh. Hence we have E : CD : : Sh : Nh. 
Therefore the earth's center of gravity will be on 
the side of the plane of the earth's transverse 
axis containing the greatest weight, which side 
will be turned towards that part of the celestial 
globe from which proceeds the greatest exterior 
attraction, modified by the several forces and 
movements of the earth, or towards its centre of 
gravity as a part of the total of all matter within 
the universe. Now, if by the withdrawal of a 
portion of the water or weight as now situated in 
the northern and southern hemispheres, and 
placing it upon that part of the globe embraced 
within the limits of the desert of Sahara, the 
side Nh becomes the heavier ; then Nh would 
assume the position of Sh, and Sh that 
of Nh. How small a displacement and de- 
posit would have such an effect depends upon 
the present difference between the two sections, 
which may be less than the weight displaced and 
required to fill the desert. Bat should it be that 
the centre of gravity is now upon the side of Nh, 
there would still result a terrestial movement ex- 
actly proportional to such'increased weight. If 



DILUVIUM. 57 

the centre should be changed from Sh to JYh, the 
position of the hemispheres would be reversed, 
each assuming the previous position of the other. 
In the discussion of another question, that is, 
whether there is or is not an appreciable differ- 
ence in the length of the solar day, which as yet 
seems an unsolved question — in regard to a 
change in the velocity of the earth's rotation upon 
her axis, and thereby a difference in the length 
of a solar day. — Professor Charles A. Young, in 
the Scientific Monthly for November, 1884, says : 
" It has long been perceived, of course, that any 
changes in the earth's form or dimensions must 
alter the length of the day. The displacement of 
the earth's surface or strata by earthquakes, or 
by more gradual elevations and subsidence, the 
transportation of matter toward or from the equa- 
tor by rivers or ocean currents, the accumulation 
or removal of ice in the polar regions or on moun- 
tain tops, the friction of tides and trade winds, 
any such causes must necessarily produce a real 
effect. But it has been supposed that these 
effects were compensatory and so minute as to be 
beyond the reach of observation. It is now ques- 
tioned whether they are or are not." 



58 DILUVIUM. 

In any paroxysmal movement or general dis- 
turbance of the earth from any cause, the water 
of the oceans would remain upon its surface. 
(The specific gravity of water being less than that 
of the earth solids.) In the terrible violence of its 
movements and currents during such convulsions, 
the water would submerge the land, crossing and 
re-crossing the higher elevations of the globe. 
Any considerable sudden abnormal movement 
would also change the topography or figure of the 
earth, elevating the sea bottom and depressing 
the land. The present sea bottom would become 
the dry land surface, whilst the land now above 
sea level would be submerged and become the 
ocean bottom of the new epoch in the world's 
history. 

The total weight of the earth in tons has been 
estimated at 5,852 trillions of tons, and the 
amount of water required to fill the desert up to 
the present sea level at 176 trillions of tons, a con- 
siderable fraction of the whole weight of the 
globe, but the power or tendency of a given 
weight to move about a common centre of gravity 
increases as the squares of the distances from 
that centre. Take the earth's centre of gravity 



DILUVIUM. 59 

as a fulcrum. The power of a given weight to 
move round the centre increases as the squares 
of the distances, 1000 tons at 1000 miles from the 
earth's centre would exert 100 times the power 
that the same weight would at 100 miles or one 
tenth of the distance. Again we must double our 
estimate of the power which would be exerted by 
a given addition of weight to a particular sec- 
tion, because this weight has been subtracted or 
removed from opposite parts of the earth, equally 
distant from the common centre, it would be as if 
an amount twice as large had been added over a 
limited area from some independant source. 

If a wandering asteroid or body having a bulk 
and weight equal to twice the mass and weight of 
water required to fill Sahara, should suddenly 
fall upon the earth's surface, it would most cer- 
tainly occasion a paroxysmal convulsion of the 
earth. 

If we further consider the certainty of a propor- 
tional raising of the sea level, and thereby adding 
several times as much more to the total of dis- 
placement, it must be apparent to those able to 
fully comprehend the magnitude of such changes 
and the principles which will govern, that any 



60 DILUVIUM. 

estimate of probabilities by a comparison of 
areas and quantities will lead to mistaken con- 
clusions of the most serious kind. 

Three-fourths of the surface of the earth is cov- 
ered by water. The oceans have a depth of from 
three to six miles, sufficient to more than cover 
the entire globe to a depth of three miles. The 
elevations of the land when compared to the bulk 
of the earth is not equal to the thicknes of the 
skin of an apple to the apple, and we can pre- 
ceive how slight a movement comparatively 
would carry the oceans over the highest moun- 
tains. If the earth was suddenly moved or 
checked in its normal movements in space, the 
possibility of such a catastrophe is not so re- 
mote as we might suppose. 

The valleys and table lands, rolling hills and 
mountain ranges, indeed every part of the land 
surface of the world, is filled with many and for- 
cible proofs that such things have happened in 
the ages gone by. Cataclysms that, whilst de- 
destroying all life or animate existence, and 
changing the outer form and face of Nature, have 
prepared at each successive recurrence or period 
the earth for a new and higher order of living 



DILUVIUM. 61 

creatures than those previously existing. The 
wisest of men has said : "The thing which hath 
been, is also that which shall be." 

We may not understand the thoughts and pur- 
poses of the Infinite Wisdom that hath created 
all things and fixed the bound of duration, but 
we may scan the book of Nature and from her 
records obtain a better and broader view of future 
possibilities. 

The testimony of the rocks, as well as other 
phenomena found upon the earth, point to and 
corroborate the theory, that at remote and widely 
separated periods in the past the earth has been 
suddenly, as the twinkling of an eye, moved from 
its previous position. The inclination of its axis 
changed its zones, poles and other lines moved, 
followed by a cataclysm, covering continents 
and islands and uncovering others in its parox- 
ysms. 




CHAPTER VI. 




Physical Changes— The Desert of Sahara Formerly a Sea— The 
Lost Atlantis — Great Continent of the South Pacific Ocean- 
Islands of Polynesia. 

LL of the habitable parts of the globe fur- 
nish proofs of the many and vast changes 
which have occurred in past ages— conti- 
nents and oceans alternately taking the places 
of each other, whether by gradual elevation and 
depression, or sudden convulsions — can be now 
only matter for speculation and conjecture. It is 
most probable the greatest of such changes have 
occurred before the earth was inhabited by man, 
or even the lowest orders of life. Many thou- 
sands, perhaps millions, of years ago a long 
tropical arm of the sea extended from the Gulf of 
Mexico over the western plains and mountains be- 
fore the Rockies had attained their present 
heights. There were islands in these seas cov- 



DILUVIUM. 63 

ered with semi-tropical firs, palmettos, willows 
and other trees. Along these islands walked 
some of the most gigantic forms the world has 
ever seen — huge dinosaurs, fifty to eighty feet 
in length, and many other remarkable animals, 
such as crocodiles, tortoises, fishes and mammals. 
Their remains are found for hundreds of miles 
along the flanks of the mountains, imbedded in 
strata of shale and sand-stone. The climate was 
warm and uniform, as attested by the flora and 
fauna of a warm tropical sea, which occupied the 
western prairies and plains from the Gulf of 
Mexico over the Wasatch range. The animals of 
the Jurasic age were of great size, some feeding 
upon the abundant vegetation, others, such as 
the creosaurus, were flesh eaters. — Pkof. A. 
Lakes, in Scientific American Supplement , 1879. 
According to Sir Charles Lyell, Sahara was a 
sea and under water between latitude 15° and 30° 
north during the glacial period, so that there was 
continuous water communication between the 
southern part of the Mediteranean and the Atlan- 
tic, now bounded by the west coast of Africa. 
This large area is now a sandy waste, much of it 
lying below sea-level, whilst other land surface 



64 DILUVIUM, 

in other parts of the world have disappeared be- 
neath the sea. 

The continent of Atlantis disappeared beneath 
the Atlantic Ocean. Of this continent so little is 
known that its former existence is regarded, by 
some, as doubtful. "We believe future explora- 
tions and researches will not only show its for- 
mer existence as a dry land surface, but satisfac- 
tory evidence of its sudden immersion. They 
will most probably disclose proofs of the fact 
that when this continent was above the water 
there was still another continent, as large as Asia 
and Europe, siuated in the southern hemisphere, 
where now rolls the South Pacific Ocean. The 
numerous groups of islands in Polynesia are but 
the higher elevations and peaks of a great con- 
tinent that once lay far above the water by which 
it was surrounded. Within this continent there 
may also have been large deserts or depressions 
below sea-level, as we now find them in Africa, 
separated, perhaps, by narrow sand and chalk 
ridges from the ocean, which has by a tidal wave 
or earthquake, or an artificial canal, found an 
opening into the interior, which rapidly enlarg- 
ing, has poured the waters of the ocean into them, 




DILUVIUM. 65 

thereby changing the normal or previously exist- 
ing conditions, disturbing the earth's centre of 
gravity and equipoise in space, and introducing 
all the varied changes which such an event might 
be supposed the immediate cause of, including 
the extinction of animals and the beginning of 
a new geological epoch. 

If the event occurred by the opening of a canal 
to reclaim waste land and facilitate commer- 
cial intercourse, it may be that deep dredging 
will bring to light some evidence of the former 
existence of these antediluvians. It is, however, 
most likely that the water found its way through 
some opening made by nature, rather than that 
it was the work of the inhabitants of the 
country. 

The interest of archaeologists has been awaken- 
ed by the recent discovery of curious ruins, stat- 
ues and carved figures of larger size on Easter is- 
land in the middle of the Pacific ocean, twenty- 
five hundred miles west of the west coast of South 
America. The discovery was made by the offi- 
cers of the German gunboat Hyena, on a voyage 
from Valparaiso to the Samoan islands. The 
vessel stopped at Easter island on her voyage, 



66 DILUVIUM. 

and during the stay her officers explored it, and 
collected many relics, and made sketches of the 
large carved images which could not be brought 
away. The present inhabitants are entirely ig- 
norant of the history of these interesting ruins, 
and have no traditions of the intelligent and cul- 
tivated race who occupied the island before 
them and have disappeared. Why Easter island 
alone, of all the myriad islands in that vast 
ocean, should possess such ruins? who were the 
people that built them? whence they came? and 
in what catastrophe they perished — are questions 
that force themselves upon us, without giving a 
clew to the answer. Probably the Easter island 
ruins were the work of the same race as that 
which built the ruined temples and carved the 
broken images of Yucatan ; and when we shall 
have learned something about the one, we will 
know something of the other. 




-^ 




CHAPTER VII. 



Physics — The Earth's Equipoise — Aerolites — Objects in View — 
Commercial Benefits — San Erancisco Chronicle— Area — Falla- 
cies — Mississippi Kiver — Dynamics. 

IT is said the blow of a hammer will move the 
earth, or an atom the equipoise of a globe ; 
but if this atom be taken from the opposite 
side of the same globe it is as though double the 
weight had been added from some other source. 
To fill the African desert requires the removal 
from other parts of the water surface of the globe of 
thousands of billions of tons weight, and this 
weight being also taken from places at the great- 
est possible distance from the earth's centre, its 
power to change the equipoise of the earth and its 
position in space will be proportionately in- 
creased, or as the square of the distances from 
the centre, that is, at the distance of four 
thousand miles, the radius of the earth, it will be 



68 DILUVIUM. 

sixteen times as great as if placed only one thou- 
sand miles from the centre. 

A disturbed or broken equipoise will occur as 
readily in the case of a larger globe or body as a 
small one, under like conditions. 

Dr. Kane says: "Nothing can be more imposing 
than the rotation of a berg. I have often watched 
one rocking its earth-stained sides in steadily 
deepening curves, as if gathering energy for 
some desperate gymnastic feat, and then turning 
itself slowly over in a monster somersault, and 
vibrating as its head rose in the new element like 
a leviathan shaking the water from its crest. It 
was impossible not to have suggestions thrust 
upon me of their agency in modifying the geolog- 
gical disposition of the earth's surface." 

These icebergs breaking away from the gla- 
ciers of Greenland, as they slowly push their way 
down to the sea, are carried by the winds in a 
southerly direction where, meeting with the 
warmer water of the gulf stream, the under parts 
are melted faster than those above water, until 
the base, growing too small for the superstruct- 
ure, the line of gravitation in the oscillations of 
the mass falls beyond, and there is an immediate 



DILUVIUM. 69 

inversion or change of position. The berg's line 
of gravity is determined by the superior size and 
attraction of the earth, and the freedom of its mo- 
tions are also affected and restrained by the vis- 
cosity and friction of the water. The same nat- 
ural laws apply to the earth ; its centre of gravity 
is fixed by the total of attraction from without ; its 
motions as well as position in its orbit are the re- 
sult of external force applied to its mass as now 
distributed about its actual centre. Change any 
one or more of these factors and a new centre 
and other physical alterations must follow. The 
berg is surrounded by a fluid that, more or less, 
affects the freedom of its movements ; the earth is 
hung in space and is retarded by no friction of 
parts in responding to the slightest change of any 
character. As the kaleidoscope presents a new 
combination with every change, so will the earth 
with every material alteration in the position of 
its elements. 

With many there is a vague, undefined impres- 
sion that the earth is rigidly held in place and made 
to revolve by natural forces that would be unaffect- 
ed by either more or less resistance. The earth is 
associated with the idea of firmness and solidity, 



70 DILUVIUM. 

whereas nothing is more easily disturbed by nat- 
ural causes. Tidal waves that occasionally occur, 
as in the Pacific a few years since, when large 
ships were transported a mile inland ; or the great 
tide on the English Coast, caused possibly by the 
near approach of some large body in its passage 
through the heavens ; these being beyond our 
atmosphere are not luminous, or passing in the 
shadow of the earth are unobserved. One was 
seen in the year 1879, a dark mass that rapidly 
receded from telescopic view. In such cases the 
effect is proportional to size, and nearness caus- 
ing a momentary check or lurch of the earth, and 
raises a tidal wave that moves on until it breaks 
on some distant shore. After the passage of such 
a body the earth resumes its normal state and 
motion in these cases, whilst both bodies are af- 
fected relatively in proportion to quantity, yet 
not sufficiently so to bring them in contact. 

Though no one questions the existence and 
operation of natural law, or its application to the 
movements of the earth as well as to any lesser 
body, yet some may suppose that so vast and 
ponderous a body as the globe we inhabit could 
only undergo such changes by imperceptible de- 



DILUVIUM. 71 

grees, requiring ages to complete. The greatness 
of the earth only appearing by comparison with 
ourselves or other small objects upon its surface, 
when we regard the superior size of some of the 
planets and myriads of other celestial bodies in 
other parts of the heavens, it appears by compar- 
ison as insignificant in bulk as a molecule beside 
a mountain. 

It is also true that the magnitude of an event, 
or the interminable and disastrous consequences 
and evils with which it may be fraught to man 
and the lower animals, has no effect upon the 
operation of natural law. Great revolutions and 
changes in nature occur usually only at long in- 
tervals of time apart, and serve to mark the be- 
ginning and end of an age. During the present 
century stars of great size and brilliancy have 
suddenly disappeared from the firmament, as 
though disrupted and scattered through space ; 
large fragments or aerolites have fallen upon the 
earth's surface, whilst thousands composed of 
lighter and more combustible material have been 
consumed owing to their velocity and friction 
in passing through the earth's atmospheric enve- 
lope, all of them but parts of some celestial wreck, 



72 DILUVIUM. 

proofs and evidence of the great forces that exist 
potentially, and in many instances requiring but 
the feeble touch of some insignificant hand to 
change this latent force into the kinetic energy of 
universal destruction. 

Though mankind should not, by their own 
hand, precipitate a deluge, there are in operation 
natural forces which, at long intervals, have and 
will again bring upon the earth a cataclysm 
marking the end of one geological age and the 
beginning of another. We observe that the North 
Pole is constantly turned toward the north star, 
or the same part of the heavens. The small an- 
nual change of 50 seconds may be due to the grad- 
ual transfer of water to the Southern Hemisphere. 

The Northern Hemisphere contains three- 
fourths of the land surface of the globe, and has 
an average elevation above sea level of more than 
2,500 feet. It would therefore seem that the cen- 
tre of gravity is at some point within the North- 
ern Hemisphere; but notwithstanding this fact 
the water of the earth, which is the only element 
upon its surface sufficiently mobile to move under 
the slightest pressure, is constantly tending to- 
wards the South Pole, and that whilst the sea 



DILUVIUM. 73 

level is rising there it is steadily falling in the 
north, giving to the land the appearance of grad- 
ual elevation. Marinejshells, so fresh and perfect 
as to be fit for a collection of curios, may be now 
had along the California coast, hundreds of feet 
above the present level. 

About nine-tenths of the debris from the land 
which is carried or washed down by rivers, is by 
rivers of the northern hemisphere, and is there 
deposited upon the sea bottom. When these 
movements of the land and water shall continue 
to a certain point, and the heavier side or hemis- 
phere of the earth shall be opposed to the line or 
side of greatest attraction from without the solar 
system, being a line in the direction of the earth's 
axis indefinitely extended, the gravitating bal- 
ance or equipoise will change the earth's position 
and there may be an immediate reversal of the 
poles. The major part of the land may then be 
in the northern hemisphere, or what is now the 
southern hemisphere. It may be thousands of 
years before such an event will again occur from 
natural causes ; but of this none may know. Such 
knowlege being withheld from mortal man, he 
cannot weigh the hemispheres as in a balance, 



V4: DILUVIUM. 

and if without the means of accurately locating 
the earth's centre of gravity, or the annual dis- 
placement of land and water, and therefore with- 
out the data from which to fix the time of such an 
<event in the future, he may none the more ques- 
tion the steady and ceaseless transfer of matter, 
or the consequences which will surely follow in 
the course of future events. 

History does not more certainly repeat itself 
than nature ; how wide the interval ; how long 
from one repetition to another may be proportional 
to the magnitude and character of the phenomena. 
There seems in the life of animals a period pro- 
portional to bulk — the butterfly and the elephant, 
the pansy and the oak, seem to live a period hav- 
ing about the same proportional relations as their 
bodies. And great physical changes are usually 
followed by equally great intervals of re- 
pose. If floods have visited the earth, the evi- 
dence is germain to the question of whether it 
may not again be deluged, with like results. 

If the French nation and such others as may 
favor the project for making an inland sea of Sa- 
hara should not be apprehensive of any great 
danger, there is but slight doubt of the prosecu- 



DILUVIUM. 75 

tion of the work in the interest of commerce at an 
early day. 

All great undertakings have, after being pro- 
posed, required a longer or shorter period for the 
discussion of the various questions bearing upon 
them, also time to crystalize into active measures 
the purposes of its projection, as well as to secure 
the needed financial support. 

The proposition to convert Sahara into an in- 
land sea has been under discussion for several 
years, and has received many commendations 
and criticisms in the current news literature of 
the day. With few exceptions, attention has 
been directed only to the cost and commercial 
advantages likely to result from so important a 
work. We take the following from a late issue 
of the San Francisco Chronicle : 

" Flooding Deserts. — For some years, ever 
since the French got a footing in the valley of 
the Niger with a view to the colonization and an- 
nexation of Senegambia as an African province 
of France, French engineers have been encour- 
aging a scheme for a canal to be cut from the 
Mediterranean across the outer rim of the Great 
African Desert, with the object of flooding it, 



76 DILUVIUM. 

and transforming a now arid area, almost as 
large as the whole of California, into an inland 
sea. The underlying purpose was, and perhaps 
is yet, to open navigation to vessels from the 
Mediterranean to the nearest point of approach of 
the Niger valley to the Sahara. The project 
caused a good deal of loose conjecture and talk 
about the probable consequences of flooding so 
large a tract on the temperature of Southern and 
even Northern Europe, which is now in part regu- 
lated by the hot winds from the desert, of course 
tempered by their passage across the Mediter- 
anean, but still much warmer, especially in the 
winter, than it is supposed they would be if the 
desert temperature were lowered from its mean of 
about 96° Fahrenheit, to that of the water, 
say 60° to 65°. We remember to have heard a 
very highly educated German remark on this 
subject, some six years ago, that if the desert 
were flooded, one result would be a fall in the 
mean temperature of Northern Europe that would 
render a large region bordering on the North and 
Baltic seas, now highly cultivated, uninhabitable, 
or not much better adapted to human, animal or 
vegetable life than Iceland or the north of Nor- 



DILUVIUM. 77 

way and Finland." — San Francisco Chronicle, 
July 15, 1884. 

The projectors of the several schemes for flood- 
ing Sahara have each had in view only particular 
purposes to be served and parts to "be flooded ; 
but as all these parts are connected, and consti- 
tute but a single great area below sea-level, hav- 
ing local names for different sections, the admis- 
sion of the ocean at any one place would be 
followed by the same result, practically, as though 
separate canals were at the same time opened 
from Cabes, Sidra, and opposite the Canary Is- 
lands. 

The whole of the innundable part of Sahara, 
supposing the water to rise no higher than the 
present sea-level, is several times larger than the 
State of California. The entire area of the des- 
ert contains over three millions of square miles, 
or about one-sixteenth of all the dry land surface 
in the whole world. 

Some newspaper writers have exhibited a re- 
markable want of knowledge of the physics and 
natural forces which would be brought into play 
by cutting a canal and turning the ocean into the 
desert of Sahara. Some have attempted to show 



78 DILUVIUM. 

by calculations and figures that the capacity of 
a certain-sized opening or canal would not fill the 
desert with water in hundreds or even thousands 
of years, and the scheme, for this reason, an im- 
practicable one. Such calculations have beeu 
based upon the idea of a trapezoidal canal or 
water-way, of permanent regime, carrying a 
stream of uniform depth, width and velocity. 
Such calculations may be approximately or 
exactly correct, so far as the quantity of water 
which such a canal would discharge in a given 
time and velocity ; for these are but arithmetical 
calculations, which any one may make; but the 
premises (that the width, depth and velocity of 
such an opening or stream would continue uni- 
form or permanent) is misleading, and the con- 
clusion mistaken. It is an assumption wholly at 
variance with the principles in hydronamics. 

The Mississippi river, with a fall of about four 
inches to the mile, its crooked and constantly 
changing course, acquires a velocity of five to 
six miles, sufficient to carry mud and gravel sedi- 
ment and all lighter material in suspension. This 
river has been made to deepen its own channel at 
the South Pass by cutting through a hard-pan 



DILUVIUM. 79» 

bottom, until there is now thirty feet of water 
where before there was but half as much or less. 

Were this river to flow from Cairo to the Gulf 
through a straight channel, whose sides were 
equi-distant and parallel, no steamer could possi- 
bly stem the current, but would be carried before 
it into the Gulf of Mexico. It would scour its 
bottom, carrying sand, gravel, quaternary rock r 
or other impedimenta, before it, and deposit the 
detritus in the deep basin of the Gulf. 

It is sufficient to look at any great river, witb 
rapid current and cutting banks, in order to notice 
the incessant mobility of the sides and bottom 
under the action of running water. 

A canal intended to let the sea flow into 
the desert would be as direct as possible, and 
upon the admission of the water it would 
rapidly widen and deepen by its own kinetia 
force, the channel carrying the material dis- 
placed before it with irresistible power, with a 
fall of say fifty to one hundred meters in a dis- 
tance of only twenty kilometers. The distance 
in which the total fall would occur would rapidly 
diminish from the desert towards the sea, whilst 
the head or fall would remain the same, until in 



80 DILUVIUM. 

a very short time the entire fall would occur in 
less than in a single mile. The volume and veloc- 
ity would increase with the rapidity of a geometri- 
cal proportion; unlike a swollen stream, which 
rapidly reduces its head and supply, the great 
ocean would throw itself into the breach, not in- 
deed into the contracted limits of a narrow quad- 
rangular channel, but a vast, moving arm of the 
sea, before which the primitive rocks would pre- 
sent but an inefficient barrier. With the whole 
ocean as a reservoir, the sea-level rising as the 
flood sweeps onward, the torrential character and 
terrible roar of the rushing waters could be 
likened to nothing since the time when the foun- 
tains of the great deep were broken up and the 
waters prevailed over the earth, rising fifteen cu- 
bits above the moutain-tops. 

There is no history of any event in modern 
times from which we might by comparison ob- 
tain an idea of the greatness and grandeur of the 
movement upon land and sea ; but as an illustra- 
tion of the force and effect of water bursting 
through its banks, may be mentioned an example 
that occurred many years ago in the town of 
Glover, in Vermont: A lake, one and a half 



DILUVIUM. 81 

miles long, half as wide, and one hundred and 
fifty feet deep, was drained by an opening cut for 
that purpose. The water rushing out urged its 
way down Barton river twenty miles, to Lake 
Memphramagog, mostly through a forest, cutting 
a ravine forty rods wide, fifty to sixty feet deep, 
inundating the low lands, and depositing thereon 
vast quantities of timber. 

The lacustrine surfaces in Finland, occupy- 
ing different levels, admit of draining from 
one to another, and by this means the Finns 
increase the area of tillable land. The work 
of nature is occasionally assisted by the hand 
of man in reclaiming fertile tracts. By skil- 
fully directing the course of streams, the Finns 
thus add greatly to their domain, continually 
altering the aspect of the land. The engineers 
are, however, occasionally deceived in calculat- 
ing the strength of the retaining dykes by which 
the waters are kept back, as in the case of Lake 
Hoyteainen, north of Jansen, in East Finland. 
For the purpose of gradually lowering the waters 
of this basin, whose level was . 70 feet above 
that of Lake Pyhaselka, a ditch 10 feet broad 
was begun in 1854, and soon changed to a mean- 



82 DILUVIUM. 

dering stream by the rains and melting snows ; 
but on August 3, 1859, the dikes intended to reg- 
ulate the overflow suddenly gave way, followed 
by a rush of water and a roar that was heard at 
Jansen, six miles off. The destructive inunda- 
tion lasted three days, during which time Lake 
Saima, recipient of the overflow, was so agitated 
that the craft navigating its waters could scarcely 
resist the violence of its waves. The discharge 
was estimated at 3,662,000,000 cubic yards, or 
somewhat over 14,400 cubic yards per second, 
which was about the quantity discharged by the 
Rhine and Danube combined. The amount of 
solid matter carried down represented at least 
46,000,000 cubic yards, forming a large delta in 
Lake Pyhaselka.* 

In 1818, the waters of the Dranse, in Switzer- 
land, having been long obstructed by ice, burst- 
ing through the barrier, produced still greater 
desolation. Such comparisons give but a faint 
and inadequate idea, and are something like an 
attempt to understand infinity by force of num- 
bers. 

* Elisee Reclus. 



DILUVIUM. 83 

That the inundation of Sahara would be fol- 
lowed by great physical disturbances, of the most 
marked and violent character, co extensive with 
the earth's surface, if not with the entire mass 
and framework of the globe, is as reasonably 
certain as any future event, and would be the 
second cataclysm since man was first placed upon 
the earth, and commanded to multiply and re- 
plenish the earth and to have dominion over it. 
The bow of promise — that Grod would himself no 
more destroy the earth by a flood — may be un- 
derstood as not including any prohibition on the 
part of a restless and perverse generation from 
acting in criminal disregard of those natural laws 
which a wise and beneficent creator has im- 
pressed upon nature for their improvement and 
benefit, and of the existence and operation of 
which they may be said to have had timely 
notice. 

As the sunshine and the rain descend alike 
upon the just and the unjust, so, like these, the 
errors and mistakes of some involve the many in 
the same calamities as themselves. Should such 
catastrophe occur, all will meet a common fate ; 
nor will anyone stand upon the order of his going. 



►#^@*Uh 






■S&* 



CHAPTER VIII. 




La Place — Nebular Theory of Cosmic Origin— Thermic Changes 
— Great Year— Noah's Flood. 

^HE nebular theory of LaPlace, as to the ori- 
gin or beginning of the world we inhabit, 
is now accepted as the most natural and 
consistent, and that since the earth was first de- 
tached or thrown off from the sun, and began re- 
volving in her orbit around that body, the outer 
crust has been gradually cooling. If this theory 
be true, and it be also true that the angle of the 
earth's axis to the plane of the ecliptic has re- 
mained stationary or nearly so, then there never 
was a time when it was colder in any given lo- 
cality upon the earth's surface than it is to-day. 
It may have been warmer than now from the slow 
radiation of terrestrial heat ; but we know there 
has been alternating periods of heat and cold 
over the same parts of the earth's surface since 



DILUVIUM. 85 

that time, and we must account for these changes 
in one of two ways — either the position of the 
poles has been changed very gradually, requir- 
ing thousands of years to complete the cycle, or 
it has been changed by operation of natural 
causes, snddenly, and without premonition, sub- 
jecting the mass to paroxysmal convulsions, such 
as would necessarily accompany such a move- 
ment. 

To account for alternating periods of heat and 
refrigeration over the same parts of the earth by 
ascribing it to thermic changes, due to a gradual 
alteration of position, requiring many thousands 
of years, might be sufficiently satisfactory were 
it not that there are other geological phenomena 
connected with these changes inconsistent with 
the truth of such a hypothesis and such infinitesi- 
mally slow processes. 

The great year of 21,500 years of 365 days each 
would produce an alteration of heat and cold 
over different parts of the earth. Glaciers after 
being formed might transport earthy matter and 
rocks. Fossil remains might be covered or un- 
covered by the slow action of the elements, re- 
quiring centuries to add to or take from the land 



86 DILUVIUM. 

a single inch in depth. Geological revolutions, 
with slow and measured steps, have certainly 
made many physical changes. But there still 
remain facts which cannot be thus accounted 
for, situations that could not thus occur, condi- 
tions that could not be except as the result of 
diluvial movements which must have been caused 
by sudden changes in the inclination of the 
earth's axis to the plane of the ecliptic. 

Any considerable sudden movement of the 
earth's axis would, of necessity, be followed by a 
paroxysm, and this by a flood or deluge of the 
land. We have a brief historical account of one 
such movement of the waters since the earth has 
been occupied by existing races, but prehistoric 
evidence derived from the physical features of 
the existing land surface of the earth furnish very 
strong grounds for saying that each geological 
period in the history of the earth has had its con- 
vulsions and floods, the cause being a change in 
the earth's axis or angle of inclination, as also 
in respect to the matter composing the mass. 
Natura'ists have felt the need of accounting for 
existing phenomena, and have ascribed much to 
glaciers, volcanoes and earthquakes, sometimes 



DILUVIUM. 87 

assigning to a mere effect the importance of a 
first cause. 

The last flood which visited the earth came 
since it was peopled by man and existing races 
of animals. It was not universal, but partial ; 
some parts of the earth escaped the rushing wa- 
ters and the destruction which followed. A rem- 
nant of all existing races survived the disaster. 
The historical account is such as would be ex- 
pected, as the first attempt at written history, 
made ages after the event ; but with the physical 
indicia of the flood still fresh, it was only the his- 
torical recognition of a natural verity. 

We think the Mosaic account of the last or 
Hoachian flood in respect to events preceding 
or following the flood should be taken as simply 
the first written narrative of facts and events, a 
knowledge of which had been before that time 
preserved by tradition. Between the occur- 
rences and the time when they were committed 
to writing, there intervened, perhaps, many ages, 
during which this knowledge was changed and 
varied in its details, the people being ignorant, 
superstitious, and without even knowing how to 
reckon time — but of the principal fact, the 



88 DILUVIUM. 

great central truth contained in the Mosaic ac- 
count, we feel assured, that is, that ages after 
man's appearance as an inhabitant, and when 
the world had grown populous and filled with the 
habitations of men, there was a flood by which 
they were suddenly cut off and destroyed. It 
is probable also that mankind have inhabited 
the earth much longer than the time fixed by 
any written account. This seems, from prehis- 
toric evidence, as entirely reasonable. It is 
probable that ages came and went long before 
man had made sufficient progress in learning to 
so much as transmit by tradition to his descen- 
dants a knowledge of important events. As man 
increased, and the demands of his nature re- 
quired improved methods and an improved vo- 
cabulary, he began to possess a traditional 
knowledge of past events. Whatever may be 
said as to chronological differences and discre- 
pancies between geology and the Mosaic account 
of creation, we doubt not the fact that there was 
a great flood, and the destruction of much the 
greater part of all living creatures then upon the 
earth. In all ages natural laws have been the 
same and the records of nature are true. Our in- 



DILUVIUM. 



89 



terpretation may be wrong, but of this we may be 
certain — all truth is consistent, however diverse 
the sources from which it comes, or to which it be- 
longs. Any true hypothesis must be consistent, 
not only with the immediate causes and results, 
but in harmony with every other phase or condi- 
tion of matter. Theories accounting for some, 
but inconsistent with the existence of other phe- 
nomena, cannot be true. 





d £©<,*, 

*-»*♦ 



CHAPTER IX. 



The Last Flood— Chinese Antiquity— Asia— The Earth's Axis — 
Former Position— Mammalia — Glaciers — Coal Measures. 




LTHOUGH telluric phenomena plainly indi- 
cates that at some remote period since 
the world was inhabited by man a great 
flood and convulsion of nature, caused by a sud- 
den change in the position of the earth's axis to 
the plane of the ecliptic, and -that the aqueous 
covering of the globe has rolled over and across 
the dry land surfaces of the earth, it would seem 
that the very high table lands of Asiatic Russia 
suffered less than other parts, and a part of the 
tops and sides of the mountain ranges of Amenia 
escaped inundation. Mt. Ararat is 17,000 feet 
above sea level, its top covered with perpetual 
snow. 

If at the time of this last inundation or deluge 
vthere remained one- third, or 5,000 to 6,000 feet, of 



DILUVIUM. 91 

the upper part above water, such persons and 
such animals as might have been upon, or could 
reach, the higher ground would have escaped. 

Some facts furnished by geological authorities 
indicate a high degree of probability and truth 
in respect to the Chinese claim of great antiquity, 
reaching far beyond any period given by modern 
or ancient chronological tables. Archibald Geikie 
says: 

14 A curious fact deserves to be noticed during 
the convulsions by which the sediments of the 
Silurian sea floor were crumpled up, crystalized 
and elevated into land, the area of Russia seems 
to have remained nearly unaffected. Not only 
so, but the same immunity from violent distur- 
bance has prevailed over that vast territory 
during all subsequent geological periods. The 
Ural Mountains on the east have served again 
and again as a line of relief, and have been from 
time to time ridged up anew. The G-erman do- 
mains on the west have likewise suffered extreme 
convulsion, but the wide, intervening plateau of 
Russia has, apparently, always maintained its 
flatness, either as a sea bottom or as terrestrial 
plains. As I have already remarked, there has 



92 DILUVIUM. 

been a remarkable persistence alike in exposure 
to and immunity from terrestrial disturbances. 
Areas that lay along lines of weakness have suf- 
fered repeatedly in successive geological revolu- 
tions, while tracks outside of these regions of 
convulsions have simply moved quietly up or 
down without material placation or fracture." — 
Archibald Geikie, LL.D., F.R.S., etc. 

If, as it would seem, some of the most elevated 
points of Armenia and the great plateaus of Asia, 
including the western parts or more of the Chi- 
nese Empire, escaped submersion in the Noachian 
flood, the claim to an uninterrupted succession for 
nearly 20,000 years, made by the Chinese, may 
be true. 

It appears from prehistoric fossil remains, 
found in the eastern and western continent, as 
also from recent explorations in South America, 
that the earth has been inhabited by man for 
even a much longer time than is claimed for Chi- 
nese antiquity. 

In digging into the ruins at Uxmal, in South 
America, Professor Augustus Plongeon found it 
to be the site of three successive cities, each, like 
the Troy Mound, investigated by Professor 



DILUVIUM. 93 

Schliemann, marking a separate and distinct era 
and a different people. The uppermost and lat- 
est ruins indicate a rude and primitive race, far 
behind the one whose traces are found lower 
down, in the arts of civilization. The deeper 
ruins consist of idols and carved stones, some of 
them bearing hieroglyphics, more neatly exe- 
cuted and fresher than those on the monuments 
in Egypt. 

At Chichen Itza, where the ruins cover several 
square miles, he found stones bearing astronomi- 
cal characters, some of the constellations and 
fixed stars, and he suggests that, from the rela- 
tive position of these, the figures must have been 
made 19,000 years ago. The earth was inhabited 
long before these hieroglyphics were cut in stone. 
Perhaps further observational investigation of 
the environments of these ancient relics will 
throw some light upon the catastrophe by which 
these cities were covered up and destroyed, 
whether by convulsions followed by submersion, 
or volcanic eruptions without inundation. 

A disturbance of the earth's equilibrium by 
contraction, or the transfer of weight from one 
section or hemisphere to another, must have been 



94 DILUVIUM. 

the immediate cause of the last deluge of the 
earth. 

A volume of water sufficient to change the nor- 
mal condition and raise the sea level above the 
mountain tops, could not have been held in sus- 
pension since the earth became a fit habitation 
for man, or subsequently evaporated within one 
hundred and fifty days. The immediate cause 
of the last flood was because " the fountains 
of the great deep were broken up." The earth's 
equilibrium was disturbed, and, as a consequence, 
she moved to a new line of gravitation and a new 
inclination of her axis of motion, which before, 
probably, . was nearly or quite vertical to the 
plane of the ecliptic. 

Northern America and England were previ- 
ously nearer the north pole ; India and Palestine 
were further away than now, and possessed a 
semi-tropical climate, which was nearly uniform 
the year round, and without so great a change of 
season as now. Vegetation grew without ces- 
sation. Huge mammalia and reptiles inhab- 
ited the torrid zone, whose remains are now found 
encased in the deposits in which they were en- 
tombed. 



DILUVIUM. 95 

When the earth's axis assumed its present po- 
sition of 23| degrees, then commenced the change 
of season which we now have, and man was then 
promised that " whilst the earth remaineth seed 
time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and 
winter, day and night shall not cease." Seed time 
and harvest and the change of season being the 
result of the procession of the equinoxes and the 
present inclination of 23 \ degrees, ikmay be in- 
ferred that this was the beginning of a new 
rather than the continuation of an old condition. 
It is readily perceived that, should the earth's 
axis assume a greater inclination than now, the 
changes would be still greater between sum- 
mer and winter, the earth's surface subjected to 
much greater alterations in temperature and ren- 
dered less fit for the abode of large tropical ani- 
mals. A considerable change of this kind would 
be followed by a general diminution in the size 
of the animals inhabiting the earth. Only the 
hardiest could withstand the great change be- 
tween winter and summer that must occur an- 
nually. Our condition would be somewhat like 
that of Yenus — the inclination of the axis of this 
planet is about 75 degrees ; her tropical and fri- 



96 DILUVIUM. 

gid zones extend over 150 degrees of latitude — 
so that the largest part of her surface is subjected 
to alternate periods of intense heat, followed by 
intense cold — changes wholly incompatible with 
the growth of large animals and luxuriant vege- 
tation. 

A change of inclination in the earth's axis of 
motion alone would not alter the relative dis- 
tances of different parts to the poles, but the posi- 
tion of this axis in respect to the matter compos- 
ing the globe would also be proportionately 
changed from its previous position, such a move- 
ment being the effect of a composition of all the 
contending impulses acting upon the earth at the 
moment. 

The revolution of the earth about its shortest 
diameter is the cause and not the effect of its 
spheroidal form ; a change in its axis of motion 
would cause a depression at the new poles and a 
filling out where they were before. 

A considerable change in the location of the 
poles would produce a convulsion, and give the 
earth's mass and topography somewhat the ap- 
pearance of having been put into a sack, well 
shaken, and then poured out again. 



DILUVIUM. 



97 



Upon the hypothisis that the world has expe- 
rienced a deluge at the beginning and end of 
each geological period, since the eocene epoch, 
we can account for glacial periods in parts of the 
earth where now nothing remains but the evi- 
dences of their former existence ; for finding the 
fossil remains and well preserved specimens of 
huge tropical animals in high northern latitudes ; 
for the vast coal measures ; for the denudation of 
some and the submersion of other sections of the 
surface, as well as scores of situations and natu- 
ral phenomena which confound and bewilder the 
geological student. 



•*©-)# 




CHAPTER X. 

Climatal Changes — Glacial Systems— Age of Ice — Earth's Cen- 
tre of Gravity Changed by — Inversion of the Poles. 




j) ARTS of the earth now within the frigid 
were once within the torrid zone, and sec- 
tions now torrid or temperate were once 
within or near the arctic and antarctic circles. 
Of this there is no doubt, the question being 
whether these changes were slow, requiring thou- 
sands or even millions of years ; or sudden, as 
when the equipoise of a ball is changed it seeks 
a new line of gravitation. In our opinion it was 
the latter, and that the geological record left by 
such movements establishes the truth of this hy- 
pothesis. 

The Duke of Argyle says: "We are accus- 
tomed to associate the geographical position of 
Greenland with extreme cold ; but the rocks of 



DILUVIUM. 99 

Greenland tell us that, although this is the case 
now, it was not so in former ages. . But the cu- 
riosity of this contrast between the present and 
the past, as regards climatal conditions, is noth- 
ing to the still greater contrast in this matter 
which is presented by finding the same fossil 
flora in the rocks of Greenland — rocks whose sur- 
faces are now almost wholly bare of vegetation, 
and all the higher elevations of which are covered 
with eternal ice and snow. The flora of the coal 
measures has certainly flourished on the area 
now occupied by Greenland. " — Good Words ^ 
April, 1884. 

" Two great glacial systems are recognized, the 
eastern and western. The former extended from 
Southern Canada to the Mississippi River, and 
as far south as Kentucky. The Catskill Moun- 
tains have been striated ; the markings are very 
fresh — no rock marks could be more so. These 
markings are 2,800 feet above the sea, showing 
the ice to have been 3,000 feet thick. * * The 
sides of the second canon of the Colorado River 
are glaciated from bottom to top. These walls 
are 1,000 feet high — the glacier was 1,700 feet 
thick. Salt Lake was covered with ice ; musk-ox 



100 DILUVIUM. 

bones are found there. This was an arctic ani- 
mal. " — Archibald Geikie, LL.D.,F.R.S. 

The remains of glaciers are found to the pres- 
ent day in California and Oregon, as far south as 
Yosemite Valley, and without doubt at no remote 
period might have been found in Sonora and Chi- 
huahua, Mexico. 

The nebulus theory of the origin of the earth 
being accepted, and that it has been gradually 
losing heat, it would be colder now in any given 
place in the temperate zones than at any former 
period ; and if the earth's axis has always inclined 
23£ degrees to the plane of the ecliptic, as it now 
does, it could never be that mountains of ice and 
arctic animals only existed where now blossoms 
the magnolia and the orange, and other semi- 
tropical fruits and flowers. So, too, Iceland and 
Greenland have once had a warm climate, rich in 
tropical fruits and fragrant flowers — where now 
perpetual winter reigns, with only icebergs, polar 
bears and the remains of an occasional arctic ex- 
pedition. The south pole has experienced the 
same thermal changes and vicissitudes. 

" This change of climate is one of the most per- 
plexing problems of geology. That a different 



DILUVIUM. 101 

distribution of land and water and ocean currents 
may have contributed to the former climactic con- 
ditions of the arctic regions is probable. Astro- 
nomical conditions connected with the changes 
in the eccentricity of the earth's orbit have also 
been suggested as a cause, and finally it has been 
supposed that a somewhat different chemical 
composition of the atmosphere prevailing co- 
operated with geographical conditions to main- 
tain the peculiarly mild climate, which, so far as 
we can judge, prevailed throughout the arctic re- 
gions in Paleozoic times." — American JEncyclo- 
pedia. 

It must be evident that this change of climate^ 
due to alterations of temperature over the same 
parts of the earth, will continue to be one of the 
most perplexing of geological questions, until 
the true hypothesis or key to unlock these ap- 
parent difficulties and contradictions shall be 
found. Professor H. B. Norton, recognizing the 
objections to the many and perplexing theories 
in the field, presents one which seemed to him to 
present a better solution of the question, and con- 
sistent with the thermic changes that have taken 
place, as well as other phenomena connected with 



102 DILUVIUM. 

such changes. The learned lecturer and author 
seems to have caught a glimpse of the true theo- 
ry, but passed around and away from it, by pre- 
senting as the most rational explanation of the 
various phenomena due to such changes the 
very slow movement of fifty seconds annually of 
the earth's axis, and the consequent varying angle 
to the line of the apsides, requiring more than 
20,000 years to return to the same point. In re- 
spect to this line he says in his lecture enti- 
tled "The Age of Ice": "Ancient moraines, 
striations and clay beds, evidently of glacial 
origin, testify that at some period not very re- 
mote, as we count geological periods, the whole 
northern hemisphere down to 40 degrees N. 
latitude was submerged and covered with vast 
glaciers. There is not a scientist of eminence 
who questions this assertion. * * A favorite 
theory is that of vertical elevation; but it seems 
impossible to admit that a circle enclosed within 
the parallel of 40 degrees, some 7,000 miles in 
diameter, could have been elevated to such a 
height as to produce this remarkable result. 
This would be a hard supposition to reconcile 
with the present proportion of land and water on 



DILUVIUM. 103 

the surface of the globe, and with the phenomena 
of terrestrial contraction and gravitation. More- 
over it seems that an extensive submergence was 
one of the features of the glacial age. The frozen 
archipelago called Greenland is a fair picture of 
what Northern America and Europe must have 
been at that time, and of course this precludes the 
idea of elevation. If it were not true that sub- 
mergence and a great lowering of temperature oc- 
curred simultaneously, we might imagine that a 
sort of undulation in the earth's crust, alternately 
raising and lowering each portion of it, could 
have caused this result. There is, however, no 
evidence that such an undulatory motion ever 
occurred, and we cannot conceive of any force 
likely to produce it. " * * 

" The antarctic continent is an ice- cap nearly 
circular in form, about 3,000 miles in diameter ; un- 
explored and uninhabitable, we cannot easily as- 
certain its thickness. The arctic ice-cap is much 
smaller, and is honey-combed by the Kuro Siva 
and the Gulf Stream. Nevertheless, the Greenland 
archipelago seems covered with glaciers often sev- 
eral thousand feet in depth. If we assign to the 
antarctic ice-cap a thickness of 15,000 feet, we have 



104 DILUVIUM. 

a mass of ice large enough to displace the earth's 
centre of gravity a mile to the southward of its 
centre. A gradual displacement of this sort r 
caused by the slow accumulation of ice, would 
produce an imperceptible drainage of the oceans 
from north to south — the gradual emergence of 
northern and the submergence of southern conti- 
nents. If we examine the globe we seem to dis- 
cover an actual result of this sort. The greatest 
mass of the ocean is gathered about the south 
pole ; the northern hemisphere includes five- 
sixths of the land surface of the globe. More- 
over, geologists affirm that this inequality is in- 
creasing; they assert that the northern continents 
are slowly rising, and the islands of the South 
Pacific sinking. It is more probable the water is 
slowly draining away from the north to the south 
and accumulating in the southern hemisphere. 

"I have assumed an arctic ice cap of 15,000 feet 
thickness, and a displacement of the earth's 
centre of gravity one mile toward the north, at 
the height of the glacial age. It is not necessary 
to assume any such amount of displacement. If 
the earth's centre of gravity coincided with its 
centre, so as to equalize the amount of water in 



DILUVIUM. 105 

the southern and northern hemispheres, Itasca 
Lake would not be more than 600 feet above sea 
level. Now push the centre of gravity 2,000 feet 
towards the north, and the Arctic Ocean would be 
so much deeper over the pole, and the water would 
be about 1,000 feet deeper in latitude 45 degrees. 
To accomplish this result we must calculate that 
the space within the arctic circle was covered 
by an ice cap averaging 8,000 feet in thickness — 
an entirely supposable case. Such an amount of 
displacement would flood all the low lands of 
North America down to the line of 40 degrees. It 
thus seems there have been many glacial periods- 
in each hemisphere ; that the earth, like a mighty 
pendulum, vibrates from pole to pole through 
vast but regular periods." — Scientific American, 
Sup. No. W0, 1879. 

It is thus Professor Norton, and those who 
agree with him, propose by what seems a plaus- 
ible theory, to account for thermic changes and 
glacial periods over different parts of the earth, 
now embraced within the temperate zones ; and 
to account for these slow accumulations of ice, 
first at one pole and then at the other, it is as- 
serted that the line of the apsides or major axis 



106 DILUVIUM. 

of the earth is not fixed with respect to other 
bodies in space, but that it is slowly revolving in 
the direction that the earth moves in its orbit. 
The axis of the earth having a gyratory motion of 
50 seconds annually, requires a period of 21,000 
years to make a complete revolution, and return to 
the same position in respect to the major axis of 
the ecliptic. That the variations of the ellipticity 
of the earth's orbit causes a corresponding differ- 
ence in the length of the summer and winter sea- 
sons of the northern and southern hemispheres ; 
that at this time the summer of the northern half 
of the globe is eight days longer than that in the 
southern hemisphere, it follows that the winter 
season in the southern hemisphere is now eight 
days longer than that in the northern hemisphere, 
making a total difference between the two of six- 
teen days. That this being now the long winter 
of the southern hemisphere, glaciers and ice are 
now forming in winter faster than it is melting 
in summer, consequently there is a gradual in- 
crease in bulk about the south pole, a correspond- 
ing change of the earth's centre of gravity and 
lowering of the sea level north ; thus these periods 
of refrigeration alternate between the poles dur- 



DILUVIUM. 107 

ing a period of 10,500 years, when the maximum 
of severity or cold is reached, the oceans sub- 
merge the land, and glaciers and icebergs form 
as far as 40 degrees north or south latitude in 
whatever hemisphere the long winter prevails at 
the time. 

The waters of the southern hemisphere are be- 
ing drained southward, and during the long win- 
ter of the great year the ice accumulates slowly 
but surely, changing the earth's centre of gravity 
southward. It is probable that when it passes 
south of the equatorial plane, there may be a dis- 
turbed equilibrium, and an immediate inversion 
of the poles toward that part of the universe from 
whence proceed the greatest exterior attraction. 
The earth will constantly present that hemis- 
phere containing the greatest weight, which is 
probably at present the northern hemisphere, 
this containing five-sixths of the land surface, 
having an average elevation of over two thou- 
sand five hundred feet above sea level. The 
earth constantly presents the arctic circle or 
north pole to the same part of the stellar universe, 
just as the moon constantly presents the same 
side to the earth, this being the side containing 



108 DILUVIUM. 

the greatest weight, because the earth exerts a 
controlling force or attraction over that body. 

Slow and imperceptible change, caused by the 
gyratory motion of the earth's axis, may account 
for alternations of heat and cold at the poles, 
and consequently for the formation of glaciers ; 
but there remains phenomena inseparable from 
these changes, of which this alone does not 
seem to be the immediate cause. 

We think it likelv natural forces are in con- 

«/ 

stant operation, which at long intervals of time 
bring about a disturbed equilibrium by gradual 
transfer of matter from one hemisphere to the 
other, and are followed by cosmic convulsions 
and floods. 

There has been, since the earth lowered its tem- 
perature sufficient to admit of being inhabited 
by living creatures, beginning with the lower 
orders, great floods, the immediate effect or result 
of a change in the earth's centre of gravity, 
diluvial convulsions marking the end of one 
epoch and the beginning of another. This hypo- 
thesis will account for phenomena which cannot 
be otherwise explained, and seems consistent with 
all recognized facts in geology. 



DILUVIUM. 109 

It will best account for finding the fossil re- 
mains of the mastodon, elephant, rhinoceros, 
hippopotamus, tigers, cave bears, hyenas, and the 
bones and implements of prehistoric man, pre- 
served in high northern latitudes and in caves and 
gravel beds. Natural agents, such as wind, rain, 
frost, cyclones and volcanoes, have also wrought 
great changes in the unwinding of the ages, but 
all these have their insignia or ear marks not to 
be mistaken for those of a cataclysm, nor those 
of the latter for glacial action on th^ sedimentation 
of quiet seas, and the fluvatile deposits of rivers. 

" The oolitic rocks are remarkable for the 
variety of organic remains they contain. The 
animal remains are those belonging to the land 
and to fresh water. The teeth and bones of fish 
and reptiles are abundant. The reptiles are 
mostly saurian animals and turtles. Among 
these are the megalosaurus, the plesiosaurus 
and the iguanodon, some of which must have 
been at least 70 feet in length and of the height 
of an elephant. There are also vegetable fossils 
in these rocks, consisting of arborescent forms, 
trunks of paleous gigantic reeds and similar vege- 
table productions, which are now to be found 



110 DILUVIUM. 

growing only in the torrid zone." — Thos. Dick, 
LL.D., Geology, p. 70, 

"The bones and skeletons of large animals, and 
especially the mammoth, are found in diluvial 
gravel in many countries. In Siberia the tusks 
of the fossil elephant are found in the diluvial 
banks of almost everv river, and sometimes in 
such abundance that the ivory from these skele- 
tons is an article of export. 

" It is said that the skeleton of a whale lies on 
the top of mountains 3,000 feet high on the coast 
of the northern ocean which could scarcely have 
been conveyed to such an elevation but by an 
immense overwhelming deluge." — Thos. Dick, 
LL.D., Geology, $.71. 




CHAPTER XI. 




Former Epochs and Floods — Natural Agents — Erratic Rocks- 
Sudden Changes — Norwegian Theory. 

^HE several destructions and new arrange- 
ments of the material composing the earth, 
which the eminent astronomer and plry si- 
cist, Dr. Thos. Dick, supposed to have taken 
place in the past, must have been in consequence 
of terrestrial movement, caused by either a gra- 
dual or sudden displacement of the earth's centre 
of gravity. The same causes are still at work 
and in time must produce similar results ; but it 
is also possible for man to precipitate a greater 
or less convulsion of the earth by facilitating the 
displacement of matter upon the earth's surface. 
Volcanic action, however great, does not create 
any material alteration of position in matter, and 
hence does not effect the centre of gravity, but a 
change of mass from one section to another must 
have this effect. 



112 DILUVIUM. 

The convulsions that have marked the end of 
one geological age and the beginning of another 
were the immediate result of a sudden alteration 
of position due to gravitation. That any sudden 
change of position would be followed by great 
floods hardly admits of a doubt. 

We regard, as some of the effects and present 
proof of such occurrences in the past, the fact 
that different parts of the earth's surface have 
had periods of great heat, followed by an age of 
extreme cold; that tropical animals are now 
found in the arctic regions, fully preserved ; the 
movement of immense erratic rocks hundreds of 
miles, and to higher levels ; the fossil remains of 
marine animals far in land, and to great heights 
above sea level, as well as finding the remains of 
man and all kinds of quadrupeds, and the bones 
of whales and other marine and land animals 
occupying a common burial ground at great 
depths, in drift beds and caves ; and to the 
same immediate cause the formation of all the 
principal coal measures of each geological age, 
the deposit of boulders and boulder clay, as well 
as other phenomena, much of which is ascribed 
to glacial action — a, favorite theory, and used to 



DILUVIUM. 113 

account for generally whatever does not appear 
to have been certainly caused by heat, contrac- 
tion or volcanoes, this being considered the 
residuary share of ice, icebergs and glaciers. 

England, Europe and America have in the past 
experienced periods of great refrigeration, when 
icebergs and glaciers existed, as they now do, 
within the arctic and antarctic circles. Most 
scientists accepting this hypothesis have con- 
structed the further theory that most of the phy- 
sical features of those countries are due to glacial 
action. If a valley has been filled, a mountain 
or hillside striated, or a ridge of gravel and clay 
deposited, glaciers did it ; if a sea bottom was 
ridged, or a channel scoured, it was done by a 
glacier of the right size and depth, with under- 
hanging rocks, like the diamond in a glass cut- 
ter, ready to do the work; if great, angular stones 
and rounded boulders were transported hundreds 
of miles, either up or down grade, by land or 
water, across wide valleys or mountain ridges, it 
is the irrepressible glacier that did it. 

" Some of the blocks of stone with which the 
surfaces of glaciers are loaded, falling occasion- 
ally through fissures in the ice, yet fixed and 



114 DILUVIUM. 

frozen into the bottom of the moving mass, and 
are pushed along under it ; in this position, being 
subjected to great pressure, they scoop out long, 
rectilinear furrows or grooves parallel to each 
other on the adjacent solid rocks. Smaller 
scratches and striae are made on the polished sur- 
face by crystals or projecting edges of the hard- 
est minerals, just as a diamond cuts glass." — 
Antiquity of Man, p. 231. 

It seems to us that a much larger share in the 
dispersion of erratic rocks has been given to gla- 
cial action than any observational fact or analogi- 
cal reasoning will warrant or support. A glacier 
is an immense body of ice and snow formed by 
slow accretions, and, when moved, must proceed 
with the lines of the mountains and valleys, and 
not obliquely or at right angles to them ; yet 
such was often the direction of these lost rocks. 

" In Masssachusetts the direction taken by the 
drift, as shown by a multitude of examples, va- 
ried from north and south to northwest and 
southeast. . This carried the current very ob- 
liquely across most of the precipitous ridges of 
mountains in the State. Nevertheless the boul- 
ders held on in the general direction with re- 






DILUVIUM. 115 

markable uniformity. In the western part of 
Massachusetts the mountains are from one to 
three thousand feet high, yet vast quantities of 
boulders have been carried over these ridges." — 
Edw. Hitchcock, Geology, p. 238. 

In the eastern continent there are many similar 
instances — rocks of immense size broken off and 
carried hundreds of miles; and thousands of 
smaller ones still further. The most natural sup- 
position must be that deluvial forces have up- 
lifted and taken these rocks, whirled them along 
from some centre of dispersion, and afterwards 
depositing them, as the velocity of the current 
became diminished by opposing obstacles or cur- 
rents, in the order of size and specific gravity, be- 
ginning with the deposit of the largest and end- 
ing with the smaller pebbles and sand, which, 
being easier carried, were taken greater distances. 
In the concussion of opposing currents and 
mountain waves, rising, perhaps, like giants, to 
thousands of feet above the general level, rocks 
would be broken and torn from their resting 
places to be taken by the recession of the water, 
as a great wave carries out the shells and sand 
which it gathers within its power. 



116 DILUVIUM. 

There is no question as to the former existence 
of a glacial period over parts of the earth now 
favored with a genial sun and luxuriant vegeta- 
tion, or the fact that the glaciers have left indel- 
lible traces of their movements, and contributed 
in various ways to produce physical alterations 
in the land ; but the same causes which brought 
about the glacial age in latitudes where none 
now exist, was itself the fruitful source and chief 
instrumentality for much the greater part of the 
phenomena found in those places and ascribed to 
glacial action. We do not see in what other way 
England and Scotland, as also North America 
north of latitude 35, could be subjected to an age 
of ice, except by an alteration of the position of 
the earth in the plane of the ecliptic and a corres- 
ponding change in the arctic and antarctic cir- 
cles. Nor could this movement have been a slow 
and progressive change, since this would be in- 
consistent with a number of other equally un- 
questioned facts which no other than a sudden 
cosmic movement will so satisfactorily account 
for. 

If in a change, in the angle of inclination to the 
ecliptic, there should be also more or less altera- 



DILUVIUM. 117 

tion in the position of the axis in respect to the 
matter of the earth, and this does not seem im- 
probable, the grandeur and sublimity of the 
convulsion would be increased by the filling out 
in one place and flattening in another, so to again 
assume the spheroidal form due to rotation. 

Sir Chas. Lyell thought the movements of the 
earth by which the land has been submerged or 
elevated have been very gradual, not to exceed 
two and one-half feet in a century, and that the 
period since Wales first rose above the sea level 
until now is more than 200,000 years ; that periods 
of depression have been equally slow and regu- 
lar ; that these elevations were caused by gradual 
contractions from within. 

The apparent effect would be the same if, in 
consequence of gravitation, the rotation of the 
earth, and other forces co-operating, the water 
should recede from one hemisphere and rise in 
another. Such seems to be true, and the process 
is now going on — the water slowly subsiding 
from the northern and rising in the southern half 
of the world. The preponderance of land being in 
the northern hemisphere, it is probable the cen- 
tre of celestial gravitation is within the northern 



118 DILUVIUM. 

hemisphere. If, then, this recession of the water 
shall continue until the centre of gravity is trans- 
ferred to the south, the earth will move round 
and there will be an inversion of position. 
The inclination of the axis may be more or less 
than now. We observe that between the planets 
there is no uniformity of position to the ecliptic, 
varying from vertical in Jupiter to 75 degrees in 
Venus. The existence of any land surface is 
probably due to the slow and constant operation 
of causes that, at long intervals of time, produce 
paroxysms co-extensive with the entire mass of 
the earth. It seems consistent with reason, as 
well as with the appearance of the land. The 
vast ranges and chains of mountains, the faults 
and contortions of the rocks and coal measures, 
indicate such spasmodic movements. But for this 
gravitation which is constantly lowering and 
leveling the land, depositing the solids in the sea, 
the water would in time cover the whole surface, 
and all land animals become extinct. Favorite 
theories to account for irregularities and moun- 
tain ranges found upon the earth are contractions 
within and volcanoes. The latter are local in 
action, and the eruptions of matter thrown out 



DILUVIUM. 119 

affect limited areas. Active volcanoes are to the 
present day quite numerous, and have produced 
many structural alterations of surface throughout 
the world — as, for instance, the great earthquake in 
the island of Java in 1883, completely changing 
the hydrography of the straits of Sunde. 

Figuier represents an active volcano by a moun- 
tain having a vertical opening in the center, run- 
ning down through the earth's crust and connect- 
ing with a vast central mass of liquid tire, sup- 
posed to fill the whole of the interior of the globe. 
Earthquakes and volcanoes are intimately con- 
nected, being different phenomena springing from 
a common cause. This connection is not always 
apparent. The volcanic field is more limited and 
local than the disturbances occasioned by them. 
The fire and smoke of powder discharged from a 
cannon are confined within a narrow range, but 
the effect or concussion may be felt to a consid- 
erable distance ; the heat produced by the oxi- 
dization of different substances within, and the 
resulting chemical changes that take place upon 
a large scale at varying depths by the introduc- 
tion of air and water, the expansion finally 
bursting, either through some existing crater — 



120 DILUVIUM. 

forming a new one — or else creating internal 
modifications in structure of such magnitude that 
the force of the movement may be felt over an ex- 
tensive area. Tremblings may also be occasion- 
ally due to gradual depletion within, as by the 
escape of petroleum and gases during a long se- 
ries of years, the earth eventually settling down 
to refill the place of those substances which have 
escaped. It is also worthy of observation, in this 
connection, that nearly all volcanoes are situated 
near the sea — it is questioned if there are any ex- 
ceptions to this rule. Humboldt has shown that 
Jurullo and others form part of a series ultimate- 
ly connected with the sea or large lakes. 

Volcanoes, though often disturbing districts of 
considerable area, do not cause any material 
transfer of position in the ejected mass. The for- 
mation of limestone is constantly going on, and 
constitutes about one-seventh of the earth's sup- 
posed solid crust. This material, when decar- 
bonized by internal heat, and afterwards slack- 
ing or expanding by contact with air and water r 
must find vent, and the severity of the shock and 
magnitude of the eruption must bear a direct re- 
lation to the extent and depths of the heated 



DILUVIUM. 121 

mass below. Whether there is any connection 
with other volcanoes in the same range may be 
doubted, as the existence of others in the same 
chain of mountains may be because the same 
ranges will contain in different parts the same 
elements or conditions for the production of erup- 
tions. Rocks and material other than such as 
may be subjected to similar chemical change by 
heat, are thrown out in the form of lava, eruptions 
usually occurring in widely separated districts and 
at long intervals apart. The effect is local, and not 
likely to ever be the cause of any general distur- 
bance of the earth, or its movements. A volcano 
is but an eruption upon the skin or cuticle cov- 
ering the central mass, and beneath which lies 
the primary unstratified rocks of the eocene age. 
All natural agents have their functions and 
parts, separately or jointly, as factors in pro- 
ducing physical phenomena; the great year ac- 
counts for glacial periods within the limit due 
to the change of the earth's position in respect to 
the apsides, and may be a link in the chain of 
cause and effect ; but is not the immediate cause 
of other phenomena directly connected with such 
changes? Any true hypothesis not only accounts 



122 DILUVIUM. 

for the phenomena to which it relates, but is con- 
sistent with every fact, though only indirectly 
connected or a subsequent part in the same chain 
of events, and should involve no inconsistency with 
any other fact throughout the realms of universal 
nature, from whatever quarter it may come. All 
truth is consistent, however wide the field or 
distant the source. Immutable as the decrees of 
God, its author, conflict is impossible. The sud- 
den alteration of the earth's position as a result 
of broken equilibrium and the diluvial move- 
ments which would follow, changing the arctic 
region from one point to another, accounts for 
much that seems otherwise inexplicable. Glaciers 
receive and transport to greater or less distances 
earthy matter and rock ; but is it probable that 
the moraines and vast deposits of boulders and 
boulder clay have generally been so made ? A 
glacier is slowly formed, and moves with an im- 
perceptible motion. It receives earthy material 
and stones by occasionally being detached from 
some higher elevation, and, falling or rolling 
downwards, finds lodgment, and are covered up 
by new ice, thus becoming rigid and fixed as part 
of the mass, to remain until, the ice thawing, they 




DILUVIUM. 123 

are quietly dropped. The rocks would be angu- 
lar and rough. Such is not the fact. They are 
smoothed and rounded — almost spheres in shape. 
They show evidence of having been violently 
rolled in sand, water and earth, permitting attri- 
tion one with another, as castings are polished 
until, finding quieter water, they were precipitated 
along with other material. 

" Before the glacial theory was adopted, Swedish 
and Norwegian geologists speculated on a great 
flood, or the sudden rush of an enormous body of 
water, charged with mud and stones, descending 
from the central heights or water-shed, into the 
adjoining lower lands. The erratic blocks were 
supposed in their downward passage to have 
smoothed and striated the rock surfaces over 
which they were forced along." — LyelVs An- 
tiquity of Man, p. 233. 

Periods of heat and refrigeration were alter- 
nated over the same parts of the globe — a warm, 
tropical climate has been succeeded by one of in- 
tense cold and a glacial age. To the agency of 
the latter, Agassiz, Lyell and others have attrib- 
uted a greater share in the production of existing 
phenomena than analogical reasoning from ob- 



124 DILUVIUM. 

servational facts would seem to warrant. And 
if so, the glacial theory must be restricted to at 
least only those effects which might be reason- 
ably expected to follow the supposed conditions 
existing during an age of ice. 

Professor A. H. Worthen, director of the geo- 
logical survey of the State of Illinois, in vol. 7> 
p. 23, of his report, in his remarks upon the dif- 
ferent strata found in sinking a coal shaft at 
Pana in that State, says: "One interesting 
feature of the superficial deposits here was the 
presence of two distinct forest beds or ancient 
soils — one three and a half, the other two and a 
half feet thick, and separated by fifty-seven feet 
of blue clay. One or both of these ancient soils 
have been found over a large portion of the State, 
and they present a serious obstacle to the land, 
ice or glacier theory of the origin of the drift de- 
posits." 



^ k 




cy 










3 (!&<«-*• 



CHAPTER XII. 




Petrified Forests — Corroborative Evidence— Fossil Remains — 
Theories in Respect of — Pliocene Age — Animal Habits — 
Ossiferous Caves — Fish Fossils — Aurignac — Kansas — Sub- 
mersion. 

NOTHER fact which would indicate past 
diluvial convulsions, is found in the large 
number and position of erratic rocks scat- 
tered over many sections of the land in America, 
Europe and Asia, and still another is found in 
the petrified forests of Colorado, Arizona and other 
places. These rocks and forests furnish strong 
evidence of grand and great exhibitions of tremen- 
dous hydrostatic force, situations and effects that 
could hardly come from other than the rapid and 
violent movement of water. 

In Colorado are found fossil remains of forests 
of large timber, originally standing and growing 
on the rich soil of the low lands and river bottoms, 



126 



DILUVIUM. 



now covered and incased in rock formed from 
the siliceous deposits of a deluge. 

In the Yellowstone Park, Colorado, are found 
the remains of ancient forests completely silici- 
fied and enclosed in strata of sandstone, shales, 
breccia and fragmentary rock. Many of the 
trunks are twenty to thirty feet high, standing 
now as erect as when in the vigor of active 
growth, their roots in most cases imbedded in 
layers of tine-grained material, in which they 
gjew; while the battered and branchless trunks 
are incased in the coarse conglomerates and 
breccias. These latter are composed chiefly of 
basaltic fragments, many of great size. There is, 
however, always enough tafaceous and other fine- 
grained material to fill the interstices and act as 
a cement. 

Only the stronger trees of the forest have with- 
stood the fierce storms of rocks, sand and water 
that must have prevailed at the period of their 
entombment, as the smaller trunks and branches 
are prostrate or totally destroyed. * 

These fossil remains of large trees have not 



* W. II. Holmes, U. S. Survey, 1879. 



DILUVIUM. 127 

been covered with volcanic detritus, or been built 
around as they stood in comparatively shallow 
waters. 

Such conditions are contrary to human experi- 
ence and observation. They could not grow in 
water, or become petrified even to the bark and 
branches from heated scoriae, as supposed by 
some authors. 

But if, by some paroxysmal convulsion of na- 
ture, from contraction within or causes without, 
the earth and its aqueous covering has been in 
violent commotion, the oceans crossing and re- 
crossing the land in great tidal waves, the forests 
occupying the alluvial bottoms and valleys with 
the adj acent hills and high lands to partially break 
the destructive force of the incoming waters, 
the detritus would finally incase the whole and 
preserve the heavier timber in its natural posi- 
tion. Nature has strewn far and wide the evi- 
dences or ear marks of such events ; and though 
it may be we cannot say how many or how great 
the intervals in time between, or tell the immediate 
cause, it still seems in accord with existing phen- 
omena and known principles or natural laws, that 
a change in the earth's centre of gravity, with a re- 



128 DILUVIUM. 

suiting readjustment of matter and the earth's 
position in its orbit, has been the proximate 
cause and will best account for thermic changes ; 
and the situation and preservation of both vege- 
table and animal fossil remains, as the same are 
now found in different parts of the world, the well 
preserved bodies, including the hair and outside 
coating of the animals, such as the elephas pri- 
mogenius, a huge herbivorous tropical mammal, 
now found in Siberia and other high northern 
latitudes entombed in ice. The blood, flesh and 
tissues must have been frozen at the moment of 
death. Had they died in such a climate as they 
only could have grown and lived in, decomposi- 
tion would have taken place, and no vestige now 
remain to testify to their former existence. They 
died in or near the place of their nativity, but 
that place was suddenly moved from near the 
equator and beneath a tropical sun towards the 
polar circle and a region of intense cold. 

"The remains of the elephas primogenius were 
found in latitude 66 degrees 30 minutes north, so 
near perfect that even the eyes were preserved ; 
and another carcase, found in latitude 75 degrees 
15 minutes north, near the river Taimyr, was em- 



DILUVIUM. 129 

bedded in strata of clay and sand, with erratic 
blocks, 15 feet above the sea level ; in the same 
deposit was found the trunk of a larch tree, asso- 
ciated with fossil shells, characteristic of the 
drift period." — LyelVs Principles, 7th ed. 

In the history of British fossils, 1846, Professor 
Owen remarks : 

"Although the molar teeth of the rhinoceros 
tichorrhinus present a specific modification of 
structure, it is not such as to support the infer- 
ence that it could have better dispensed with 
succulent vegetable food than its existing con- 
geners, and we must suppose, therefore, that the 
well clothed individuals who might extend their 
wanderings northward during a brief but hot 
Siberian summer, would be compelled to mi- 
grate southward to obtain their subsistence dur- 
ing winter." 

To suppose the elephant, rhinoceros tichor- 
rhinus, hippopotamus, tigers, and other tropical 
animals were different in nature, wants and habits 
in former ages from what they now are in animals 
belonging to the same genera, or that in the past 
pliocene age they could inhabit high northern 
latitudes, subsisting on lichens, sea moss and 



130 DILUVIUM. 

the scanty growth of a bleak climate, or that 
they were more migratory than now, spend- 
ing their summers north and occasionally over- 
taken by a cold snap, seems hardly reasonable, 
unless by a parity of reasoning, we might also 
suppose pomegranates and bananas flourished 
upon the tops of icebergs and glaciers about the 
same time, and they have also since become in- 
digenous to a warmer climate. 

" The fossil remains of the mammoth, an animal 
twice as large as the elephant, are abundant in 
Siberia and Alaska, where their tusks are gath- 
ered as an article of export. This extinct race is 
now found perfectly preserved in the ice and 
frozen soil of the arctic regions. A specimen dis- 
covered at the mouth of the river Lena, and now 
at St. Petersburg, Russia, retained the hair and 
flesh, and every part in its natural condition. 
Wolves and other arctic animals fed upon the 
flesh. Its food consisted of leaves and branches 
of trees, and vegetables. They once existed in 
large herds, as also tigers, hyenas and other 
tropical animals. 

"The mastodon, larger than the mammoth, also 
an extinct species of the quaternary period; its 



DILUVIUM. 131 

food the coarsest vegetables, such as could only 
grow under a tropical sun. The fossil remains 
of this animal are abundant in the temperate 
zone of America, as in the higher latitudes of Asia, 
and belonged to different geological epochs." — 
Johnson's Cyclopedia. 

Finding well-preserved remains of the mam- 
moth, elephas primogenius, tiger, and other 
tropical animals in Siberia and other high lati- 
tudes, seems forcible evidence, not only of great, 
but sudden changes in the position of the earth 
in its ecliptic or in space. 

These animals were natives of the land in which 
they perished. If the change from a warm 
tropical country and climate, as we know once 
existed there, had been by the slow gyratory mo- 
tion of the poles — one complete revolution con- 
stituting the great year of over 20,000 years — the 
thermic change w r ould have hardly amounted to 
so much as one degree in a century. All these 
animals would certainly have become extinct 
long before the climate became cold enough to 
prevent decomposition. This must also be true 
if the climatal changes had occurred from any 
other slow movement of the land. We see no 



132 DILUVIUM. 

way to avoid the conclusion which we have drawn 
from the facts. 

The fossil remains of animals, including those 
of man, and belonging to the pliocene and qua- 
ternary periods, are found in the gravel beds and 
pluvial deposits of the pliocene and post-pliocene 
age. These have been considered by Dr. Rigollett 
and Sir Chs. Lyell as satisfactory evidence of the 
antiquity of the race of man; but, not only the 
places, but the relations in which they are found, 
furnish presumptive proofs of some sudden and 
unexpected cataclysm which came upon all living 
creatures — a universal deluge and destruction of 
life. 

In the gravel beds of Europe, England and 
America are found the bones of the mastodon, 
elephant, hyenas, whales, marine shells and Crus- 
tacea in close proximity and confusion, occupy- 
ing a common burial ground, and we do not 
doubt a common burial — facts scarcely possible 
had these animals been born, lived and died in 
the usual course of nature during the impercep- 
tible evolution of a geological period. 

That these and other post-pliocene deposits 
have been the result of sudden aberrations of the 



DILUVIUM. 133 

globe and vast and terrific movements of the 
water upon its surface — movements whose sub- 
limity and grandeur was like that when God said : 
" Let the waters under the heaven be gathered to- 
gether unto one place, and let the dry land ap- 
pear ; and it was so." The waters of the earth 
could not be gathered together, nor the dry land 
appear except in harmony with the laws of gravi- 
tation, for these are but the emanation and will of 
the Divine Spirit, in whom there is neither change 
nor shadow of turning. Such a convulsion of the 
aqueous matter on the earth would destroy the 
lives of all pre-existing creatures, and leave them 
in inextricable confusion, covered by the detritus 
of the great waves and currents speeding from 
one portion of the globe to another like the water 
in a vessel which is tilted first one way and then 
the other. A sudden aberration or movement of 
the earth would move the lines of latitude and 
longitude, the position of the earth in the plane 
of the ecliptic, and mark the end of an old world 
the beginning of a new one. 

By this theory we account for finding the fossil 
remains of different orders and genera in their 
present relations ; of tropical animals in a frigid 



134 DILUVIUM. 

climate, of changes of climate over the same and 
different parts of the earth, and other phenomena 
which has been as a riddle to the geological 
student. 

Changes ascribed to the evolution of countless 
ages have been wrought in the time required to 
describe them. 

The wisest of men hath said : " The thing which 
hath been is that also which shall be." As Na- 
ture's law — God's law — is unchanging and un- 
changeable, producing an endless round of cause 
and effect, like causes produce like effects, and 
like effects follow like causes; the principle, or 
Nature's laws, than which nothing is more certain 
or better settled, must be questioned, or else 
accept the conclusion as to the results to be ex- 
pected upon the consummation of the project for 
making an inland sea of the great desert of 
Sahara. 

Many facts, attested by writers upon geology 
and the natural sciences, without reference or 
thought as to their bearing upon and corrobora- 
tion of the hypothesis as to past or future floods, 
furnish the strongest presumptive evidence of the 
truth of the theory that such events have and 
will again visit the earth. 



DILUVIUM. 135 

Others again, recognizing the unquestioned ex- 
istence of fact and phenomena, have attempted 
to account for them upon theories inconsistent 
and artificial — the offspring of a fertile imagina- 
tion. 

Some of the strongest presumptive proofs of 
past submersions are found in the position and 
environment of fossil remains. 

" Cuvier states that the mastodons, discovered 
near the great Osage river, were almost all found 
in a vertical position, as if the animals had died 
standing in mud." 

"■A mastodon disinterred at Long Branch, New 
Jersey, was found standing and in a vertical posi- 
tion, as if he had wandered into a swamp in search 
of food and had died on the spot." 

"If the nature of the animal induced it to 
search for food in such situations as we find their 
bones, those that sunk in the mud or died there 
would be preserved, while other animals, having 
no inducement to go into those places, would 
leave no evidence of their existence. The bones 
of other animals, and even those of mastodons, 
when left in situations exposed to atmospheric 
influences, and as a prey to smaller gnawing 



136 DILUVIUM. 

animals, would be destroyed, and no vestige of 
them would remain. This we know to be true 
from the fact that, although the country has been 
long inhabited by moose, deer, bears, wolves and 
smaller animals, yet rarely are any of their re- 
mains found/' — Jus. Hall, Geology of New York, 
p. 365, v. 4. 

It is not supposed these animals died in the 
usual course of nature from age, for in that case 
they would be nearly always found couchant, and 
not levant or standing. Nor do we regard the 
hypothesis reasonable that they wandered into a 
quagmire or bog in search of food and were un- 
able to extricate themselves. Though no theory 
may be demonstrated, yet the one which does 
least violence to the known habitat of an animal 
must be the most probable. We had as soon 
expect to find an animal of the feline race diving 
for clams, as a huge herbiverous grass eater, 
the elephas primogenius, or the mastodon going 
into a swamp in quest of food. 

The mastodon, and his congener, the elephant, 
is noted for intelligence, as well as his habits 
of feeding upon firm ground. An elephant, 
when required to cross a bridge, will first exam- 






5~^~J^ 







Fig. 3. Elephas Primogeniue in search of food. 



DILUVIUM. 139 

ine and try its strength by stepping lightly, be- 
fore venturing his ponderous body upon it. 
These fossil remains, now so abundantly found 
in North America, were ante-diluvians ; living at 
the time of the last flood, they met their fate in 
the common disaster which had overtaken them 
and all other living creatures in whatever situa- 
tion and wherever they happened to be at the 
time of being overwhelmed. It is probable such 
an event was immediately preceded by great dis- 
turbances and indescribably terrific sounds, and 
that all animals sought shelter. The very large 
animals resorting to lower rather than higher 
ground. 

In the ossiferous caves and gravel . pits in 
France. England and Wales are found the fossil 
remains of both living and extinct races of post- 
pliocene animals, including those of the human 
race. These are found thrown together indis- 
criminately, occupying the same caves and de- 
posits— ante-diiuvian animals that perished in 
these caves. 

" The remains of the rhinoceros, hyena, tiger, 
bear, hippopotamus, horse, ox, elephant and 
other animals, including man, are found in vari- 



140 DILUVIUM. 

ous caves in Europe and England. In the cavern 
at Kirkdale the great number of hyena teeth in- 
duced Dr. Buckland to suppose it had been a 
den of extinct hyenas, and that the other remains 
were the bones of animals which had been 
brought in as prey, and that they were suddenly 
exterminated by the eruption of muddy water in- 
to the cave, burying the hyenas and their vic- 
tims in an envelope of mnd." — Reliquce Dilu- 
viana. 

"It will be apparent that the bones in the 
ossiferous caves may either have been chiefly col- 
lected by predaceous animals, or have fallen into 
them from openings in the ground above, or 
drifted into them, or be the remains of mammals 
which have entered and died in the caves. * * 

* That men have at various times inhabited 
caves and used them as tombs is well known, 
and is shown by the remains of the woman at 
Paviland. 

" If man had been a cotemporary inhabitant 
where these extinct carnivora roamed in search 
of food, he might, as well as other creatures, 
have formed a portion of such prey." — De La 
Beche, Geology, p. 302. 



DILUVIUM. 141 

Whilst there is no question as to the facts 
stated in the quotations from the eminent French 
geologist, M. De La Beche, we do not think his 
theories as to how the remains found their way 
into these ossiferous caves the most probable. 
And we give these and other quotations from dis- 
tinguished and learned authors as evidences of 
the facts stated, and not as approving in some 
instances the various theories proposed as to how 
these animals came to be there. 

So, too, the fossil remains of fish are found in 
the oolitic rocks, and petrified in siliceous mate- 
rial in which, when soft and plastic, or held in 
suspension by water, these fish were enveloped. 
So, also, are found the fossil remains of whales 
far inland, thousands of feet above the sea. But 
we do not know that whales were ever suspected 
of being amphibious. They are found in the 
same deposits with land animals, which, to us, is 
an evideuce of the operation of forces that made 
companions of different animals without regard 
to the element in which they had lived. 

" Multitudes of fossil fish are found in rocks, 
that their sudden destruction seems needful in 
order to account for the mode of occurrence, it 



142 DILUVIUM. 

appearing also necessary that their entombment 
was sufficiently rapid to prevent the destruction 
of their harder parts after death. * * * The 
study of the old fresh and sea bottoms presents 
the occurrence of animal remains, preserved as if 
by the sudden influx of water charged with fine 
matter in suspension ; large numbers seem thus 
to have been destroyed." — De La Beche, p. 515. 
In the cave near Aurignac, in the department 
of the Haut Garonne, the opening into which was 
discovered by chance by a laborer chasing a rab- 
bit which took refuge in a small opening that was 
found to lead into this natural excavation or 
terrene cave, within this cave, and near to the en- 
trance, was found the fossil remains of seventeen 
persons of different ages, also the bones of bears, 
wolves, elephants, buffaloes, horses, reindeer, 
polecats, and other kinds of animals, both her- 
biverous and carnivorous. Sir Charles Lyell 
supposed these caves were used for burial pur- 
poses, and that the bones of the animals were the 
relics of funeral feasts. Such may have been the 
case, and the reason for finding the fossil remains 
of animals, but we think it improbable, as we do 
not see clearly how a people possessing no more 



'■■:■:■■: 




Fig. 4. Vertical section of cave near Aurignac, showing the position of 
human and other animal fossils. 



DILUVIUM. 145 

-effective weapon than a flint arrow head or a 
stone hatchet could kill and capture such an ani- 
mal as the mammoth or elephantis primogenius, 
an extinct species more than twice as large as 
any now living, or transport him whole if they 
had succeeded in so doing ; nor does it seem more 
likely they could induce so intelligent an animal 
to voluntarily come to be barbecued for the con- 
solation of surviving friends. But when it is in- 
ferentially alleged that these post-pliocene 
people used polecat in place of curry powder, 
for these are also found, we respectfully but 
firmly « decline to adopt the obitual theory, and 
believe a great wrong has been done to the 
memory of these early pioneers of the human 
race. 

If a Kansas farmer rushes into a cyclone cave 
at the approach of a summer cloud, we can readi- 
ly perceive the inducement, not only for man, 
but animals also, to seek cavities in the earth and 
other places of supposed safety during great 
paroxysmal convulsions of nature. 

If the Kansas farmer and family should be cov- 
ered up and perish, after ages finding the out- 
lines of the excavation and his fossil remains, 



146 DILUVIUM. 

would pronounce him a cave dweller; or, his 
traits and habits being inferred from the locus 
a quo, he might be described as a sort of 
marsupial homo. If his favorite dogs and cats 
were also included in the deposit, the difficulties 
would be augmented, and his memory in danger 
of irreparable injury from the theories of the 
coming scientist. 

. Besides the fossil remains in ossiferous caves> 
there are also found in gravel beds and other plu- 
vial deposits the remains of both land and marine, 
living and extinct orders of animals, and the same 
strange companionship between man and the 
huge herbivora and carnivora of the period, as in 
the caves and openings into which he and his 
cotemporaries had fled in the vain hope of find- 
ing from within protection against the storms 
without. 

It is not without at least a small amount of 
diffidence that we propose, or even suggest, theo- 
ries at variance with the conclusions of others; 
bat as every hypothesis mast stand upon its rea- 
sonableness and merit rather than the name and 
fame of its author, we venture to assign other 
causes to account for some of the phenomena 







Fig. 5. Vertical section of gravel and drift deposits, showing the partly 
exposed remains of different animals, including man. 



DILUVIUM. 149 

presented by the geography and geology of the 
earth. 

Moraines drift and striae are found further 
south than latitude 40 degrees. An age of ice 
and refrigeration has, at no very remote period, 
doubtless extended as far south as the temperate 
zone of North America. A sudden cosmic change 
of position moved the poles and equatorial line, 
all other changes followed progressively in the 
order of cause and effect. The slow processes of 
a change, requiring thousands of years, fails to 
account for many facts as unquestioned as that 
of a glacial period. A sudden change in the 
earth's centre of gravity must be followed by a 
corresponding change in the earth's position 
toward the sun, and a change of all terrestrial 
lines ; the earth would be swept over by tidal 
waves ; mountains of water rising in one place 
and subsiding in another ; glaciers, ice, and rock- 
ribbed mountains would be crushed and crumbled 
beneath the cataclysm ; valleys filled; rivers dis- 
appear and all living creatures buried indiscrim- 
inately, so deep and remote from the influence of 
air and water as to be preserved for ages to come. 

The fossil remains of a mastodon have been 



150 DILUVIUM. 

recently found in their natural position forty 
feet below the surface near Riverside, San Berna- 
dino county, California. This animal lived when 
the country enjoyed a tropical climate, and be- 
fore the cold period which succeeded to it. Had 
he lain down to die in the ordinary course of 
nature in such a climate as he only could exist 
in, his flesh would have decomposed and his 
bones been separated and scattered widely apart 
long before in the ordinary course of nature he 
would have been covered over. If such instances 
were few they might be attributed to a cloud- 
burst, cyclone or sudden freshets. 

Many such fossil remains are so situated and 
environed in beds and caves as to exclude a rea- 
sonable doubt that, whilst living, they were sud- ■ 
denly and without warning engulfed in a sea of 
moving water, carrying a large amount of sand, 
gravel and rock held in suspension by movements 
of great force and velocity ; by far the greatest 
number of creatures, large and small, were ground 
to atoms, and all possibility of identification de- 
stroyed; whilst by a headland, range of hills or 
other obstructions creating counter currents or 
eddies in the water, a few of them sunk and were 



DILUVIUM. 



151 



covered in the resulting detritus ; others may have 
found caves and openings in which they sought 
safety ; into these rushed animals of various 
sizes and kinds, including man. The lords of crea- 
tion, carnivorous and herbivorous animals, in 
the presence of a common danger, forgot their 
habits and occupied the same resorts only to 
meet a common fate. 




,^^p^3^ 







CHAPTER XIII. 




Coal Measures. 

"O single geological feature of the earth, or 
fact, perhaps, presents greater internal 
evidence of recurring floods at different 
periods over the earth than the coal measures. 
They contain not only evidence of the former ex- 
istence of a tropical climate within the present 
arctic circle, as shown by the carbonized vegeta- 
ble growth from which they have been formed^ 
but furnish presumptive proof of the violence 
and rapidity in movement of the immediate cause 
to which their present existence is due, as well as 
evidence that such events have been of repeated 
occurrence at long intervals of time apart. 

Each geological age had its deluge, and hence 
its coal measures, which may be distinguished 
from an earlier or later formation. Each of these 
measures are found upon such parts of the earth 



DILUVIUM. 153 

as at the time possessed a tropical climate, heavy 
forests of timber and heavy vegetable growth. 

Geologists classify the coal measures according 
to the age and the time when they began to be 
formed. 

In the beginning of each geological age the 
areas possessing a cold or tropical climate have 
been changed, and, as one consequence, the coal 
measures belonging to any age are mostly found 
upon certain areas that at the beginning of the 
age possessed the conditions for heavy timber 
and rank vegetation. Thus the coals of a partic- 
ular age are mostly found only in certain dis- 
tricts or parts of the earth. 

"The coal measures, which form part of the 
Paleozoic or oldest of the three great geological 
divisions, are mostly found in countries jiorth of 
the equator. The Mezzozoic is more abundant in 
the southern hemisphere, while the tertiary coal 
is more uniformly distributed." — Encyclopedia 
Brittanica. 

With a rapid abnormal movement of the earthy 
the waters of the ocean would be carried inland, 
and rushing over hills and valleys bear down all 
vegetable matter, compacting and covering it in 



154 DILUVIUM. 

places, and in others perhaps scattering it far and 
wide. Movements of the land would intensify 
those of the water, and in the grand whirl and 
rush of everything, the dense wood and vegetable 
growth of the torrid and temperate zones would 
be borne down and compacted by the overlying 
detritus in all conceivable shapes and at varying 
depths, where, by the exclusion of sun and air, 
and the lapse of ages, this timber and vegetation 
has been converted into coal. 

The great coal fields of America and other 
scarcely less areas in other parts of the world at- 
test the variety and exuberance of vegetable 
growth preceding its destruction and submer- 
sion beneath a sea of moving waters, earth and 
sand. When, in course of time, another and sim- 
ilar event occurs, the new growth will be covered 
there to remain concealed until converted into 
carbonized oxygen ; the previous formations will 
be faulted and broken, with different dips, ac- 
cording to the movement of the subjacent parts. 
When the earth shall experience another deluge, 
the timber and vegetation of the temperate and 
torrid zones will form the basis of new measures, 
to remain until brought forth to increase the com- 



DILUVIUM. 155 

fort and improve the condition of perhaps a new 
and better race of intelligent beings. 

Brown coal, lignite and peat beds belong to 
the quaternary age, and are of recent formation. 
The density and tropical luxuriance of vegetation, 
which would form coal veins of 10 to 25 feet in 
thickness, may be imagined, and must have 
greatly exceeded anything now found in any part 
of the globe. 

No considerable coal formation can occur from 
materially different causes; it could not be by 
mere growth and decay upon the surface ; the 
vegetable fibre would be reconverted into allu- 
vion. 

Timber isolated or covered by sedimentation be- 
comes silicified — as in the petrified forests of Cal- 
ifornia and Arizona. The character and effects 
of volcanic action are such that they could not 
aid in the creating of coal, but more likely to de- 
stroy than to create the necessary conditions. 



% 









CHAPTER XIV. 



Primordial Age— Age of the World — Deluged at Different Times. 

IN the primordial age of the world the mobil- 
ity of the material permitted the arrange- 
ment of its elements according to specific 
gravity. The whole exterior surface was one 
boundless expanse of water. There was but one 
ocean, and, outside of this, the atmosphere. The 
moon revolved at the distance of only a few thou- 
sand miles, and in proportionately less time than 
now, the tides rose and fell ten or twenty times 
as high, and the air was filled with vapor and 
clouds. It was truly void and without form. 
Terrific storms and ocean currents swept over the 
face of the deep. In the comparatively quieter 
waters of the temperate and frigid zones began 
the shoaling of the bottom and gradual deposits 
of material, and in time the dry land rose above 
the sea. Earthquakes, storms and tides contri- 



DILUVIUM. 157 

buted to increase and modify the area above the 
sea until living creatures began to occupy the 
older and more stable parts. 

How long a time was required to develop the 
first continent or to bring the earth to its present 
condition can not be told with mathematical cer- 
tainty ; but in the creation a thousand years is as 
but a day. Some have supposed that since the 
earth assumed a separate existence as an indi- 
vidual body millions of years have passed away. 
Camile Flamarion, a French astronomer, specu- 
lating upon the age of the earth, says : "The pri- 
mordial age alone, during which incipient life 
was represented only by algae, crustaceans, and 
vertebrates, as yet without a head, appears to 
have occupied T 5 / ¥ of the time that has passed 
from the epoch at which the earth became in- 
habited up to our day. 

"The primary period which succeeded it is typ- 
ified by the establishment of coal, vegetation 
and fishes, and appears to have occupied yW 
The secondary period, during which splendid 
coniferous plants predominated in the vegetable 
world, enormous saurians reigned over the ani- 
mal kingdom, lasted the following T W The 



158 DILUVIUM. 

earth was then peopled by fantastic beings that 
were perpetually at war with each other. The 
tertiary period, during which we see the advent 
of mammiferae and animal species exhibiting 
more or less physical affinity with the human 
race. Its duration was less than T | T . 

"Finally, the quaternary age witnessed the 
birth of the human species, and represents less 
than T ^ of the total time. 

"Allowing only 100,000 years to the quaternary, 
the age of present nature, the tertiary would be 
300,000; the secondary, 1,200,000; the primary, 
3,000,000, and the primordial more than 5,000,- 
000 ; total, 10,000,000." 

A further speculation of this eminent scientist 
and author is, that after the earth was thrown off 
from the sun, of which it constituted a part, 
350,000,000 years were required to reduce its tem- 
perature to 200 degrees, but does not state how 
many millions more would be required to reduce 
it to about 70 degrees, the probable maximum of 
the possibility of organic life. 

In the judgment of this writer, notwithstanding 
some difficulties, the only cosmogonic theory 
admissible is that which represents the plan- 



DILUVIUM. 159 

ets as having "been successively detached from 
the sun's equator, at the epoch in which this 
star was only a nebulse stretching far out, as 
the present orbits of the planets. 

However we may speculate as to the age or 
origin of the earth, it is reasonably certain that, 
since it became fit for the habitation of mammals, 
it has been deluged at different times, the imme- 
diate cause being a change in its centre of gravi- 
ty, and a readjustment of position to bring it again 
in harmony with exterior attraction, caused, it may 
be, by meteoric additions to one hemisphere, or by 
the slower transfer of matter from one hemi- 
sphere to the other, or from one section of the 
globe to another. 




CHAPTER XV. 



Beginning and End of Epochs — Improved Kac8 of Animals — 
End of Man — New Kace — New Earth — End of the Quater- 
nary Age of the World. 

INCE living creatures began to exist upon 
the earth, great paroxysmal diluvial convul- 
sions have successively marked the end of 
an epoch and a lower order of animals, and the 
beginning a new age and a higher order of life, 
until man himself received the breath of life and 
became a living soul, and was given dominion 
over the earth and over the fish of the sea, over 
the fowl of the air, and every living thing that 
, moved upon it. 

In every age or epoch of the world many races 
of the previous age have reappeared, as well as 
such new orders as were peculiarly the product of 
or fitted to the new and improved earth and the 
new conditions of animal existence. With regard 



DILUVIUM. 161 

to the various changes which have unquestiona- 
bly taken place at different times, the astrono- 
mer Dr. Thos. Dick says : 

"Another conclusion deduced from the an- 
tiquity of the materials of which the earth is 
composed, is that during the changes which the 
globe has undergone since its original production, 
several destructions and subsequent new creations 
of animals and plants have taken place, perhaps 
at very different and very distant epochs. The 
greater part of geologists conclude that four or 
five epochs of destruction and renewal may be 
traced in the organic remains contained in the 
different strata ; in other words, that whole 
groups have been swept at once from existence 
by some powerful catastrophe, and their places 
supplied by other races called into existence by 
the creating energies of the Almighty. The 
records of geology seem to testify that such was 
the condition of the globe in those early periods 
as to temperature and other circumstances, that 
our present races of animals could not have then 
existed, and that such was the nature and consti- 
tution of these primeval beings that they could 
not exist in the present constitution and circum- 



162 DILUVIUM. 

stances of oar globa, their natures being adapted 
to the different conditions of the earth at differ- 
ent periods of its existence. 

" A further conclusion is, that the successive 
changes to which our globe has been subjected 
have been improvements in its condition as a 
habitable world. That there has been a corre- 
spondent advance towards perfection in the na- 
tures of the animals and plants which have been 
placed upon its surface, and that the Deity, dur- 
ing this long period of successive changes was 
gradually fitting up this world for the residence 
of moral and intellectual beings, such as the 
human species. It appears next to certain that 
the race of men could not have inhabited this 
globe in any of the past periods of its duration 
prior to that era in which he was placed upon it. 
It would appear that Deity prepared a suitable 
habitation for man by the agency of those laws 
which he impressed upon the elementary prin- 
ciples of the material universe in the begin- 
ning." — Thos. Dick, LL.D., Geo., p. 74. 

"It appears that every successive general 
change that has taken place on the earth's sur- 
face has been an improvement of its condition. 



DILUVIUM. 163 

Animals and plants of a higher order have been 
multiplied, with every change, until at last the 
earth was prepared for existing races, with man 
at their head, the most generally perfect of 
all." — Edward Hitchcock, D. D., Geology r , p. 231. 

If we may draw from these facts any conclu- 
sion as to future events, it would seem to be, that 
when man has made all the improvement the 
present earth in its relations to his animal and 
spiritual economy will permit, there will then 
come an end to the quaternary period, or the 
age of man, and the earth will again be pre- 
pared anew for a new and still more advanced 
order of intelligent beings. 

There is a limit beyond which, in physical im- 
provement and moral and intellectual progress, 
man, in his present state and with his present 
surroundings, cannot go. Doubtless many will 
differ widely as to where this limit may be found. 
But we may be now facing the outer line of this 
utmost limit. Take a retrospective view of all 
that has been accomplished. Consider the rapid, 
almost startling progress made during the last 
five hundred years in the arts and sciences and 
human inventions, especially the rapid advance 



164 DILUVIUM. 

of the last century, it seems almost incredible to 
even the people who have themselves been actors 
in this last act in the drama of human life ; to all 
others, were they now living, the marvellous de- 
velopment would be as a fairy tale too wonderful 
for human credulity. The printing press, by 
which knowledge has increased and books been 
multiplied ; steam power, in all its strange and 
wonderful applications ; railroads, and the iron 
horse ; transportation, with the velocity of winged 
couriers of the air ; telegraphs and telephones, 
annihilating time and distance ; tunneling through 
mountains ; uniting distant seas ; all these and 
more have been accomplished by man. It would 
seem there can be but a limited range beyond. 

Of the several projects for isthmian transit be- 
tween the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, that of the 
Tehuantepec Ship Railway is the least expensive 
and most practical. It involves none of those 
dangerous geographical changes in land and cli- 
mate, which the author of Man and Nature, or 
physical geography modified by human action, 
supposed at least possible upon making an open 
waterway between the two oceans. 

With the completion of one or more of these 



DILUVIUM. 165 

projects, there will remain no other of great mo- 
ment save the inundation of Sahara. Man may 
have reached practically the limit or goal of his 
animal existence ; with his present environment no 
further progress being possible until a new and re- 
generated earth, with a new and better and differ- 
ently constructed race of beings, with a new physi- 
ological and mental development, having a frame 
adapted to either locomotion or flight, a nearer in- 
sight into the arcana of the Creator, a physical and 
moral constitution in harmony with universal 
good ; when such organisms shall occupy and pos- 
sess the land, then a new earth will afford fresh 
fields for higher and nobler achievements, greater 
opportunities for the conquest of mind over matter 
the spirit over the flesh, the assimilation of man 
to his Maker, this will be the beginning of a new 
epoch and a new day in the endless progression 
of creatine energy. 

Recognizing the improvement and the physical 
and mental attributes of man as well as the noble 
and ignoble uses made of them, we think there is 
ample room between the present race and angels 
for an intermediate race of animals superior to 
man, and believe that in the progressive order of 
nature it will be occupied. 



166 DILUVIUM. 

In the event a great flood should prepare, reno- 
vate and improve the earth ready for the occupa- 
tion of a better and more intelligent race of beings 
than those that now inhabit it, it might not be 
regarded as an evil unmixed with good. Of 
course we do not know what others may 
think ; it is a question for each to deter- 
mine, and, if willing to accord an equal right to 
all, there can be no occasion for complaint. 

Prior to the Noachian deluge the earth was 
fertile and productive, and we may well suppose 
that, in peopling the earth and perhaps other 
globes with inhabitants, the Creator intended to 
give a display of His perfections to beings capa- 
ble of contemplating it, and to promote their sen- 
sitive and mental enjoyment. Accordingly we 
find that, when man was first placed on this globe, 
everything that was beautiful to the eye and the 
imagination, and pleasant to the taste, was pre- 
pared for his accommodation and comfort. The 
waters were separated from the dryland, the earth 
was adorned with verdure, rivers and refreshing 
streams flowed around him to increase his pleas- 
ures, trees and plants and flowers of every hue 
embellished the landscape; with the sun and 






DILUVIUM. 167 

moon to radiate light and warmth, and the 
myriads of celestial luminaries as a canopy to 
adorn his habitation and elevate his contempla- 
tion to other worlds in his Creator's dominions, 
every tree and plant yielding delicious fruit to 
gratify his taste; with perpetual springtime and 
a constant succession, there was no occasion to 
labor or lay up stores. With obedience and love 
as the only conditions of his happiness, he was 
given the will to obey or disobey ; for without this 
it would have been but a senseless exhibition of 
power to create man as an automatom who could 
neither act nor do other than certain prescribed 
performances — he would no longer be an intelli- 
gent, rational being as distinguished from the 
inferior races of animals. 

In the course of time the descendents of Adam 
and Eve became numerous, spreading out over 
the land, some living a nomadic life with 
flocks and herds, and others congregating in 
towns and cities, and engaged in tbe enjoyment 
of the passions and pleasures of the hour. 

Of the exact state of the arts or progress of 
learning and diffusion of knowledge, we have no 
historical account, but suppose they had not 



168 



DILUVIUM. 



reached the limit of man's capacity except in 
wickedness: "For God saw that the wickedness of 
man was very great, that every imagination of 
his heart was only evil continually," and to give 
them a further opportunity for improvement, if 
happily they should embrace it, the race was not 
cut off entirely by the Noachian or last flood. 

If, when the earth shall be destroyed again, it 
shall be universal, and all creatures now inhabit- 
ing the earth shall become extinct, and the earth 
renewed and fitted up for the abode of a better 
and higher race of beings ; whether the reproduc- 
tion shall begin with the lower animals, continue 
progressively upward until the highest are 
brought into existence, is beyond human ken 
to even surmise. But whether by gradual evolu- 
tion or otherwise, whether as an immediate act or 
fiat of the Creator, or the necessary result of law 
impressed by the same power over matter, is 
known only to Him who has created the heavens 
and the earth and all things therein, whose ways 
are above man's ways as the heavens are above 
the earth, and altogether past finding out. 



SL. 







CHAPTER XVI. 



Conclusion. 

IN presenting our views or conjectures as to 
the probable results to be expected from the 
conversion of Sahara into an inland sea, 
nothing more was designed or intended than 
to very briefly present our conclusions, with 
some facts and corroborative evidence of past 
convulsions, together with the reasoning in 
part from which they were drawn, so as to 
present them, as well as we could, for the con- 
sideration of others. Our object has not 
been to simply furnish a book for the amuse- 
ment of others and our own benefit, but to pre- 
sent a fact of supreme importance in its several 
relations to human welfare, as we understand it. 
We have not taken imaginary facts or principles 
and clothed them in the garments of truth and 



170 DILUVIUM. 

soberness, as De Foe, Poe, Swift and others have 
done. We are not equal to such an effort, and 
whatever of interest may attach will not be 
in consequence of the literary character of the 
performance. 

We make no claim to a knowledge superior or 
even equal to that of many. 

Every fact in nature and every principle in 
physics, upon which we have predicated the views 
and opinions presented, are open to all, and, as 
we suppose, recognized and accepted by all. We 
have not attempted an imaginary description or 
picture of the consequences and changes likely to 
occur in the paroxysmal convulsion which w r ould 
follow the inundation of Sahara should our cal- 
culations and theories prove correct. 

Were we so disposed, we would still hesitate at 
an effort in which the most active imagination, 
coupled with profound knowledge and gifted in- 
tellect, must needs fall far short of the reality ; 
where the dullest mind may supply more than 
sufficient to excite the gravest apprehension as 
to the magnitude of the changes to be appre- 
hended, and may as easily supply any omission 
on our part. 



DILUVIUM. 171 

If others reach other and different conclusions 
from a consideration of the question, as to the 
probable result to be expected from the submer- 
sion of so large a part of the earth's surface, by 
the transfer of so much water and weight, we 
trust the proofs and reasonings may be so clear 
and self-satisfying as to leave no ground for de- 
bate or doubt. 

Though we are free to acknowledge possible 
errors in the statement of phenomena or fact, and 
of principles and their application, if it should 
be so in any matter affecting the question of future 
diluvial convulsions, it can bring no shade of re- 
gret to us, though it may also add ours to the long 
list of exploded theories that have gone glimmer- 
ing in the light of later discoveries. We may re- 
mark that it is instructive to note and reflect upon 
the variety and number of scientific theories in 
almost every field of human knowledge, which, af- 
ter being accepted for generations, have been dis- 
carded, and given place to others, some of which 
may in time share the same fate. 

According to Ptolemy, the learned astronomer, 
the earth was fixed or stationary, and the sun 
and planets revolved around her. This was be- 
lieved in the middle of the 15th century. 



172 



DILUVIUM. 



Aristotle believed and set forth in his twelfth 
book of Metaphysics that the heavenly bodies 
were ensouled and that each moved in his orbit 
by a conscious volition. 

The most eminent of English astronomers, Sir 
W. Herschell, supposed the exterior surface of 
the sun to be peopled with inhabitants. 

Madler believed the star Alcyon to be the cen- 
tral sun of the universe ; others, equally learned, 
say it is a groundless speculation only. 

It is affirmed that there is in fact no evidence 
that the stellar universe is held together by any 
bond of attraction, as our solar system is, a fact, 
if true, proving that the principle of rotation and 
gravitation are not universal, though it is not 
questioned as to the solar system. 

The moon is held a dead, barren uninhabitable 
world by some, and by others the contrary is af- 
firmed. 

As to the cosmogony and destiny of the 
planets, including the earth, there are different 
theories, though not more than one can be true. 

The same phenomena in nature gives rise to 
conflicting theories ; for instance, the red sun sets 
during the present year, 1884, as also the ques- 
tion, What is electricity ? 



DILUVIUM. 173 

Whilst such, facts may prove human fallibility 
of judgment, it can not be taken as any argument 
against scientific methods or affect the general 
value of theories until shown contrary to reason. 
Seeing the company we may get into, we, the more 
readily, acknowledge the possibility of error and 
our own fallibility of judgment. 

On the other hand, if the author's theories as 
to possible results to be expected from the inun- 
dation of Sahara shall be believed sound, he will 
be entitled to at least some favorable considera- 
tion for calling attention to the subject in time to 
avoid so great a calamity ; for, if true, it will be 
too late to correct the error, or retrace mistaken 
steps after being once taken. If not true, if he is 
wrong, no harm can result from their publication, 
being only his individual convictions from the 
lights before him as herein set forth, not as forci- 
bly as they might have been ; but such as they 
are he submits them to the reader. 

San Deigo, Cal., Nov. 1st, 1884. 




<^€§* 



NOTE.— ADDENDA TO PAGE 80. 



On page 80, and in other parts of this book, 
the observations as to the probable phenomena 
from the submersion of the Desert of Sahara are 
chiefly in respect; to the movements of water ; but 
it is certain that in such an event meteorological, 
electrical and other phenomena of equal greatness, 
grandeur and sublimity, as those of land and 
water, would follow a paroxysmal movement of 
the earth. That during such a paroxysm an 
electrical storm of fire would prevail over all, en- 
veloping the whole atmospheric cover of the 
earth in its embrace, as in a sheet of flame. 

During such a paroxysm in the rapid currents, 
movements, cross movements, and collisions of 
air, land and water, the earth would become a 
dynamo or electrical machine of unknown power. 

The sharp flashes and detonations given out 
during a volcanic eruption, or the rapid frictional 



DILUVIUM. 



175 



development of electricity under a moderate sum- 
mer wind, gives but a faint idea of the electrical 
forces that would be developed during a terrestrial 
convulsion or paroxysm. In the last day, when 
"The heavens shall pass away with a loud noise, 
and the elements shall melt with fervent heat" 
it will be by the sudden liberation of forces exist- 
ing potentially within the globe itself. 




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